Quite a Sight

The objects in the photo above are Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs), the reusable, steerable rocket motors that were formerly fitted in threes to the back end of each shuttle orbiter (the spaceworthy ones, at least; poor old Enterprise never had the honor of sporting real engines). They’ve now all been removed from the surviving space-flown orbiters — the shuttles will be fitted with dummy engines when they go on museum display next year — and in this image, we see them gathered together in the Kennedy Space Center Engine Shop, all 15 of them, for the first and probably last time.

I’ve read that these engines are some of the most complicated, most powerful machines ever designed; three of them working together at launch developed some 37 million horsepower, the equivalent energy output of 13 Hoover Dams. Simply amazing.

I don’t much like the thought of them being permanently separated from their shuttles. I don’t like the thought of a Duesenberg sitting in a museum with nothing under its hood, either; it’s far more appealing, for me, to think of museum pieces as complete. Blame my sentimental, romantic nature. But I understand NASA’s current plan is to repurpose them for some future heavy-lift vehicle, so I suppose that’s a better fate for them than being taxidermied anyhow.

I don’t know how much longer they’ll be at Kennedy; they’re ultimately headed for a storage facility in Mississippi to await whatever the future holds…

Photo courtesy of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Facebook page.

Oct122011

In The Cloud

One of the morning radio teams in these parts has a weekly feature called “The List of Things That Must Go,” in which either they or listeners who write in (they alternate every other week) bitch about their pet peeves, i.e., things that must go. Today, someone went off on a lovely little rant about the recent trend toward referring to the Internet as “the cloud.” It’s not a cloud, this person insisted, it’s a physical thing composed of wires and servers and technology, and it already has a perfectly good name, the Internet, so why are people now calling it by this vague and pretentious buzzword?

Normally I’d be all kinds of down with this gripe, being as I am generally opposed to buzzwords and jargon in all their forms. But this morning I found myself listening with a bemused grin, thinking to myself that this person obviously doesn’t realize this term originated with the graphical depiction of the Internet as a cloud on networking diagrams. Because that was the simplest way to show a complex yet amorphous infrastructure that usually doesn’t need to be represented in any kind of detail on these types of diagrams. It’s not a marketing thing at all, or at least not entirely… it actually has some legitimacy!

God, I have got to get away from the tech industry somehow. I have no business knowing things like that.

Oct102011

Let’s Try This Again

So, my buddy Jack recently did some fiddling on the Simple Tricks back-end to try and stem the uncontrolled flood of spam that forced me to shut down the comments back in July. I quietly switched them back on a couple weeks ago, just to see what would happen. I’m still not entirely spam-free, but whatever Jack did has knocked it down to something I can live with, at least for the time being. I still have to manually weed out garbage comments every couple of days, but the upshot is, hey, comments! Not that I’ve provided much grist for conversation lately, but if anyone has anything to say, now you can.

You’ll still have to go through the whole sign-in rigmarole, I’m afraid, but I’m told that ought to be working better now as well. If you have any problems with it, let me know (jason at jasonbennion dot com). I look forward to getting the conversation going again!

Oct082011

Better When We Used Gelflings

Do you all remember The Dark Crystal, Jim Henson’s experimental fantasy film from the early ’80s? It’s really a masterpiece of pre-digital effects work and virtuoso puppetry that immerses the audience in an alien world populated entirely by non-human creatures. Anyhow, if you recall, there’s a scene in which the Skeses, the evil bird-like bad guys, use the power of the titular crystal to drain the life essence from the “Podlings,” the innocent little villagers who live nearby, rendering them into prematurely aged, brain-dead slaves. Here, refresh your memories… go ahead, I’ll wait…

So, yeah, my job has reminded me of a lot of this scene lately. Guess which character I am?

Oct082011

Still Alive… If You Can Call This Living…

Hello? Anybody there?

Probably not, given the way I’ve been neglecting this place lately. Sorry about that, kids. If by some chance any Loyal Readers are still out there lurking in the dark after all this time, my sincerest apologies for disappearing on you. Blame the usual culprit: My day job has entered into another of those periodic cycles of soul-crushing, nonstop activity that seems to eat up my entire existence. I haven’t had to work any super-late nights recently, and for that I’m grateful. But even with that small boon, my days have been overstuffed and hectic, busy from the moment I hit the office until the moment I leave at night. I’ve been eating lunch at my desk and not taking breaks so I can get everything done in time to escape by six, but these extraordinary efforts don’t seem to make much of a dent; my in-box remains magically full no matter how quickly or selflessly I work, like some fiendish horn of plenty. Also, there’s been an iron slug of urgency hanging over every minute of every day because it’s all due yesterday, and if all that isn’t stressful enough, I’ve found myself fighting tooth-and-nail over such earth-shattering minutiae as whether or not it’s correct to put a period at the end of a sentence that ends in a URL. God, I hate it when it gets like this. A little busy stretch here and there is one thing, but when it’s sustained day after day for weeks on end…

I don’t think people who’ve never worked in advertising can fully grasp just how all-consuming — not to mention totally draining — this industry truly is. I certainly didn’t before I experienced it myself. It’s not that I dislike my job — no, really, I don’t, in spite of all the griping — so much as I hate not having the juice for anything but my job. Most nights, I don’t get home until after seven, so it’s not like I have much free time anyway, but when I do manage to carve out an hour for the things I want to do, well… I just don’t have much left to give them. I’ve tried to write, both fiction and blog content, but the words won’t come. I try to read, and I keep having to page back to remind myself of what’s going on. I put on a DVD and find myself dozing after five or ten minutes, so I have to rewind and try again, just like I do with the book. And it doesn’t help
that the sense of urgency I mentioned has started following me home, making me feel, no matter what I’m up to, that I don’t really have time to be wasting on this activity, that I ought to be doing something else that’s more important. Not that I know what that other thing is supposed to be, of course.

I feel like I’ve lost the connection to some of the deepest parts of my identity: whatever talents I have as a writer, my literary and cinematic interests, my curiosity, hell, my sense of enjoyment. Not being able to do the things I enjoy and by which I’ve always defined myself is generating tremendous anxiety for me. It’s immensely frustrating for me to be in this place. I feel like all I do anymore is work, commute, and sleep, and that kind of treadmill existence gets to me very quickly. Contrary to what a couple of my friends seem to believe, I’m no slacker… but no one will ever mistake me for a workaholic, either. Life isn’t supposed to be like this. Well, my life isn’t anyway.

Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I just don’t have what it takes to push through the mental haze and accomplish the things I think I want to do. But in talking to friends who do similar work, I really don’t think it’s just me. We all seem to have the same complaints, the same frustrations. The day job that was supposed to support us while we did our “real work,” whatever that may be — creative writing, art, music, some kind of craft, or just having a good life that’s about something other than the thing that earns us our living — has instead come to dominate and define our identities. Against all our wishes and best efforts, we’ve been assimilated. We’ve become drab little cogs in the infernal machine. And it’s destroying us, hollowing us out in tiny little spoonfuls of glittery dust that gets cast to the wind, never to come back.

Now, I know I’ve made all these complaints before. And I realize as well that many people — maybe even most people — have frustrating, time-consuming, unfulfilling jobs. I also know that I’m lucky to even have a job, the way things are these days. I feel guilty and self-centered for writing this, as if I have no right to complain. And I suppose from some perspectives, I don’t. But knowing other people have problems too is small consolation when you’re staring at the ceiling in the quiet hours after midnight, too wound up to sleep and too wrung out to do anything else, wondering when, exactly, your dreams started to die, and you’re horrified to realize you no longer remember exactly what those dreams even were, and worst of all, you feel like you’re failing the one test everyone wants to ace: life itself.

I never have handled failure well. I once had a complete meltdown because I got a B-minus in my eighth-grade science class. A B-minus put me in tears, can you believe that? I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I’ve been on the verge of tears a few times this week, too…

Sep232011

The Story of My Life

Sep162011

Sometimes It’s Okay to Have Missed Something

You know, even I have gaps in my knowledge of 1980s pop culture, i.e., movies or other media phenomena from that most awesome of decades that somehow slipped past me back in the day. And two of the biggest omissions are a pair of cult-classic films written and directed by a cat who calls himself Savage Steve Holland and starring John Cusack: Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer.

Actually, it’s not quite accurate to say they slipped past me. I’m pretty sure I actually did see both of them at some point. In fact, I’m almost positive I ran One Crazy Summer when I was working as a projectionist at the old Cameo Theater, the old-fashioned, single-screen movie house where I had my very first job. But it would seem that neither of them made much impression on me. All I recall of Better Off Dead is that it’s the source of the ubiquitous Gen-X catchphrase “I want my two dollars,” and all I remembered from One Crazy Summer was Bobcat Goldthwait in a Godzilla suit wreaking havoc at some kind of country-club party.

I was pretty content with this state of affairs, too. I’ve never felt like I was missing something for not remembering the Savage Steve canon, although I was occasionally bemused by the reactions of fellow Children of the ’80s when I told them I had no memory of Better Off Dead (apparently the more popular of the two). A couple weeks ago, however, I ran across a DVD copy of OCS at Big Lots, and I figured for only three bucks, why the hell not? Three dollars is nothing, I thought, and I like John Cusack well enough. So I bought it. And today I had the day off and I was sitting around the house, and I figured this is it, this is the perfect time to plug this particular hole in my memory. So I watched it.

To paraphrase Better Off Dead, I want my three dollars back.

OCS is often described as a romantic comedy — certainly the DVD cover art suggests that angle, far more than the original theatrical one-sheet seen above — but the truth is, it’s more like the tail end of the “slob comedy” cycle that flourished in the early-to-mid ’80s. That was the sub-genre in which a band of poor, uncouth but genial misfits finds a way to stick it to the rich bastards who’ve been giving them shit throughout the first two acts of the film. But One Crazy Summer is no Caddyshack. It isn’t even a Police Academy 3: Back in Training.

The plot is pretty thin, even by the admittedly low standards of the category, and it’s almost shockingly lazy. This is a movie in which the good guys don’t have enough money to save the love interest’s family home from the evil land developer (played by Mark Metcalf, naturally), so they decide to get even by winning the annual sailing regatta using a decrepit boat they fix up during the obligatory ’80s-flick fixing-something-up montage. But… how’d they buy a boat if they don’t have any money? And renovation supplies are fairly costly, too, where’d that dough come from? And wouldn’t the regatta organizers demand some kind of entry fee or something? Or at the very least inspect the boat beforehand and thus discover the “secret weapon?” Most slob comedies, at least the ones that have become classics, stick to their own premises and follow something resembling real-world logic. But not this one.

Of course, fans of the film would probably counter that the movie is illogical by design. Cusack’s character is an artist, you see, and he’s always drawing cartoons that comment on and inform the plot in various ways, which we of course see as animated interludes throughout the film. But in a move that I’m sure old Savage Steve thought was terribly clever, the live-action parts of the movie are like a cartoon, too, filled with ridiculous and sometimes downright bizarre gags that are obviously meant to echo the anything-goes world of the classic Looney Tunes shorts. Except the Looney Tunes were funny, and this movie isn’t. Not to me, anyhow. Monty Python notwithstanding, I don’t do absurdity.

Bottom line: One Crazy Summer is one stupid movie.

Sep152011

Forty-Two

According to Douglas Adams, 42 is the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

It’s also the age at which Elvis Presley died alone in his bathroom, a sad, bloated caricature of the awesome force of nature he’d been a mere two decades earlier. Don’t panic indeed.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s okay. I’m not particularly upset about my birthday this year, in spite of that thing about Elvis. Not like I was for my 40th, anyway, or even my 41st last year. I guess I’m resigned to being officially middle-aged now; to borrow a line from my main man Rick, it is what it is. But even though I may be coming to terms with the 40-pluses, I can’t imagine I’ll ever really enjoy my birthdays again, the way I used to in my teens and twenties. There’s just too much baggage now, too many disappointments and regrets. Too much understanding that a single lifetime isn’t enough for all the things you want to do, and if you avoid making tough choices when you’re young — as I did — you might not get the chance to do some of them. The truth is, I passed up a lot of opportunities and wasted a lot of my youth because I was afraid of making the wrong choice and getting stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be. And also because I didn’t have much self-confidence, and just didn’t believe I could do some things. And because I was too distracted with stupid shit that in retrospect didn’t really matter that much. Every birthday now is just another reminder of how damn stupid I’ve been about a lot of things. And that, like Elvis, I’m a long ways from the hunka-hunka-burnin’-love I used to be, and I am vain enough to be bothered about that. I’ve even recently noticed myself making old-man noises when I get out of bed and try to stretch the soreness out of all the bits that don’t quite want to work first thing in the morning. When the hell did that happen?

Classic mid-life crisis, I know. Cliche’d and boring if you can’t relate, depressing if you can. And probably pretty pathetic-sounding if you’re one of the lucky ones who’ve already had yours and passed through to the other side. Honestly, though, I often wonder if I’m ever going to get past it, because it seems like I’ve been struggling with a mid-life crisis since the morning after my college graduation. I woke up that day at the age of 22 and had a full-blown panic attack about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I still haven’t figured it out.

Things might be different if I were more contented with my day-to-day existence. But sadly, things haven’t changed much for me since I wrote the following, some three years ago:

I don’t know how things got to be this way. It wasn’t so long ago that I had endless afternoons for wandering through toy stores in search of the latest collectible action figures, or for driving around with my sweetie, or for writing or blogging or simply being. God, I used to spend hours working on stories, lost in worlds of my own imagining and feeling like that was exactly where I was supposed to be. But now… now it doesn’t matter what I’m doing or for whose benefit, I am constantly aware of a clock ticking, a deadline or appointment approaching, always feeling the pressure of a to-do list that never seems to get any shorter, and lamenting more and more frequently that I have become a very boring person. I cringe at the thought of social engagements that ought to be pleasures. I even have a hard time with movies these days, because I often find myself thinking that I ought to be doing something more productive with the time I’m spending in front of the screen. Movies. My refuge and my love for longer than I can remember. I can’t tell you how depressing that is. My life isn’t supposed to be this way. I can’t even recall any more what I used to imagine my life was going to be like, but this damn hamster-wheel existence I find myself trapped in certainly wasn’t what I had in mind.

It’s that sense of urgency, a constant background level of anxiety about all the things I’m not managing to get done, that sends me into my periodic funks. I feel it throughout most of my waking hours, and it’s utterly draining. Paralyzing, really. It keeps me from doing everything from mundane chores to the things that really matter. I don’t exercise anymore, because I don’t have time. I can’t tell you when I last whiled away an entire afternoon reading, or managed to get through an entire DVD in one sitting. And you may have noticed how rarely I post here anymore. People ask me all the time why I don’t just make time to write fiction, or whatever it is I really want to do. They don’t get that I can’t. My default setting these days is “overwhelmed.”

If you’re feeling like getting me a present this year, another couple of hours of sunlight per day would be great…

And yet, my mood today really isn’t that dire. I took the day off from work and I’ve been catching up on some long-neglected stuff around the house and listening to music and playing with my kitty-boys, and tonight I’m going out with The Girlfriend for some yummy clam chowder, and all that makes for an okay birthday. I just wish I didn’t have to take vacation time to scrub my damn toilet…

Sep092011

Plans for the Weekend?

The West Jordan Sugar Factory is gone now, demolished last year in the name of “progress,” but the theatrical company named after it (and which hoped to turn the old factory into a permanent home) is still going strong. Anne and I attended the opening performance of its latest production, The Foreigner, just last night.

The Foreigner is a fun little play about a shy Englishman who finds himself in backwoods Georgia for a couple days, pretending not to understand English in the hope that all the eccentric characters around him will leave him alone if they think he can’t speak with them. Naturally, they start telling him their secrets instead, believing him to be the perfect confidante because he doesn’t know what they’re saying. And some of those secrets are very dark indeed (well, not that dark, I suppose; the play is a comedy after all!). Our friend Geoff Richards — who played the title character in another production of this play a couple years ago — has a supporting role as a crude redneck who turns out to be a leader of the local KKK. He’s really terrific in the part, particularly in a very funny scene in which Charlie, the titular foreigner, spooks Geoff’s character Owen with his seemingly supernatural insights. Geoff has been acting for several years now, and he’s getting better and better with each new performance. The entire cast is great, and the quality of the production is very high, far better than I usually expect from community theater groups. (I don’t mean to be cruel, but between the lack of money, the often too-earnest talent, and of course the local culture’s tendency to favor a handful of squeaky-clean titles over anything more adventurous… well, let’s just say I’m not usually a fan. But the Sugar Factory Playhouse is, in my opinion, running very close to pro level, a definite cut above the usual.)

Anyhow, if you’re one of my local readers and you enjoy live theater, I highly recommend this one. I was too late posting this for you to catch tonight’s performance, but there are still four more remaining — tomorrow night, Monday, Thursday, and Friday. Tickets are only $8.00 for adults and $5.00 for children, with a 7:30 curtain time. I guarantee you’ll enjoy this more than Contagion or that Bucky Larson flick that opened at the megaplex today. (What the heck is that movie about, anyhow? I feel so disconnected from my own hobby these days…) The venue is the Midvale Performing Arts Center, which people who grew up around the south end of the valley will probably remember as the former Midvale town hall at the corner of Center Street and 7800 South, in Midvale’s historic downtown area. (All right, if you want the official address, it’s 7720 South 700 West. It’s within spitting distance of the old Comedy Circuit club, if that helps.)

I’d also like to quickly mention that my buddy Jack will be riding tomorrow in the Lotoja Classic bicycle race that runs 206 miles from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Logan, Utah. This is his fourth time in Lotoja, and The Girlfriend and I want to wish him and his brother Justin, who’s riding with him, lots of luck.

Sep062011

Possibly the Most Awesome Promotion for a TV Show Ever

I’m only vaguely aware of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire — I’ve heard the title and know that it’s a period piece set in Atlantic City, and that it stars Steve Buscemi, an actor who could radiate a clammy aura of sleaze even while baking an apple pie in a field of sunflowers — but this has got to be the most awesome (and possibly the most expensive) promotional idea I’ve ever run across:

Starting on Saturday, September 3rd an authentic vintage 1920’s train
will run on the express 2/3 track in Manhattan throughout September
(specifically, from 12 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays). Originally
operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) system, the train began
service back in 1917 and will once again be operational. Customers who
have the opportunity to ride the vintage train will be transported back
in time to the Prohibition era with authentic details such as rattan
seats, ceiling fans and drop sash windows, as well as a custom branded
interior featuring Boardwalk Empire-inspired period artwork.

Scott Beale over at Laughing Squid was lucky enough to encounter this vintage train over the weekend. Here’s a little video he made of the experience:

What a cool idea. Somebody in HBO’s promotions department ought to get a bonus for this one. Scott also took a few stills; you can see them here. And the passage I quoted above came from here. And even though I live 2,000 miles away from New York, I am sufficiently intrigued by this stunt that I just may give Boardwalk Empire a look, so I guess the promo worked, eh?

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