Reinventing Batman

When I was a kid I loved Superheros.  Halloween was the best because you could dress like one and get paid in candy for it, but you never had to suffer the heartbreak of loving the lady hero or getting punched in the face. It was the perfect excuse to put on spandex pants and knock on all your neighbor's doors.  As I got older I started thinking about how weird Batman really is.  He's nuts! He dresses up in gray spandex costume in a secret cave under his house and fights a guy who wears make up and a purple suit.  Take that to Denny's and Grand Slam it!

Don't even get me started about Robin.  In the original series Robin didn't get pants. Pants!  Here's a 15 year-old kid wearing a red spandex unitard and beating criminals senseless with his bare legs!  No wonder the Batgirl wasn't interested, you named yourself after the most docile bird in the history of America.  At least be the humming bird, which has a reputation as the bad boy of the backyard.  Robins just eat worms and throw them up in their kids' mouths.  You have names from the whole animal kingdom at your disposal and you choose Robin.  That's like naming your dog Blanche, just spay it now.

The worst by far is Superman.  Its hard to imagine a more boring Superhero than the one who can't be hurt and reports the news on his free time.  What challenge is there to overcome? Oh sure, he can be hurt by a very specific type of green geode, but that's just stupid.  He can't be hurt by a tank, but if I put this magic green rock near him he'll faint!  "Damn! They found out about the quartz!" Done, son.  That's why Superman never goes hiking, because he might stumble upon some Kryptonite in the mountains where Jimmy can't save him by throwing the rock 10 feet away.  He can shoot lazers out his of his eye balls and has x-ray vision, but he never sees the rock coming and he never shoots it down.

There are actual psychologists who have analyzed the villains in the Batman Comic book series.  Wow.  But because of these "neat" people Christopher Nolan has been able to reinvent the Batman with a suit that's made of armor and not lycra-spandex, and given us Bane who is the scariest villain of all time.  Thank you for reinventing the Batman so I don't feel weird about dressing up in spandex as a child!

Watching Television With The Elderly

I was very excited to graduate from college. It’s a momentous occasion that leads to some major adjustments, mostly positive. Surprisingly the biggest challenge is not finding a place to hang my diploma, but rather adjusting to life living with my parents. My life is taking a turn for the difficult as I’ve decided to attend law school in the fall. Thinking with my financial brain I accepted my parent’s invitation to move home for the summer; an invitation guaranteed to save me money, worry and sure to give me a few good meals every single day.

I did not, however, anticipate the challenge of adjusting to my parents’ time table. As my parents arrive to their mid sixties they have started to eat early in order to catch their favorite television shows. It takes some adjusting to body and schedule to force feed yourself a steak at four in the afternoon. I’ve tried not eating lunch, but that just upsets my whole day. To compensate I’ve tried to sleep in til eleven or so, but that makes it hard to do anything at all but eat a steak at four.

The real motivation for such a rough schedule is that Adam-12, a sixties version of the numerous police shows we have today, comes on at 5. After a thrilling half hour of police delivered moral anecdotes ("And that's why you don't play around with matches!) we settle in to watch The Antiques Roadshow. Any rest home resident can tell you that this country has some serious buried treasure in the basements under the houses of your very neighborhood, and they know it for sure because of The Antiques Roadshow. After assessing the nation’s antiques we shift our position in the lay-z-boy to watch a toss up of either Bonanza, Dragnet, or Frasier depending on the mood of the household.

You would think that with all this dedication to the TV schedule they wouldn’t have time for reading or cross-stitching, but no! As they sit side by side in their matching blue lay-z-boy recliners my dad will have his Louis L’Amour western novel in his hands whilst my mom maintains her crossword puzzle close by. When the commercials come up they mute the sound and take to their literature.

I don’t mind muting the commercials because when my parents hear what the ads say in conjunction with what they show it raises too many questions.

“What are the people dressed in pink?”

“Those are his tastebuds.”

“What?”

“They’re supposed to be tastebuds.”

“What about the Talmud?”

“Nothing. These people wear pink when they talk about Scripture.”

“What?”

A real tragedy occurred this week when they replaced Adam-12 with an underappreciated ‘70s cooking show. After my dad finished his fit of disgust he sought comfort in the old black and white show, Perry Mason. This show offers him a happy second option. With no commercials and a predictable plot structure he feels right at home.

My mom has recently discovered the gruesomely alluring Bones with its strong female characters and variety of mysteries solved by the local forensic anthropologist and her dozen or so interns. I’ll be sitting down to enjoy a nice cup of Jell-o chocolate puddings when half-rotten corpses flash across the scene where people in trendy clothes discuss the various ways that the victim may have been bludgeoned to death and then eaten by rabid bunnies. Part of me is proud that they can not only turn on the television and the digital cable box but manage the six hundred channels to find their various shows.

My description is of course hyberolized, but none the less practically accurate. My father, who was a judge for twenty-five years and a bit of a legal genius, has managed remarkably well with technology that leaves me stunned and I’m forty years younger. Advancements in technology simply register lower on his enthusiasm radar.

My mother on the other hand can tell you within thirty seconds what the name and main stars are in any black and white film. Her memory for stories is incredible, and her movie recommendations are second to none. She can narrate for you the change in Hollywood production procedure and how it affected the qualities of the movies produced. She can also finish a crossword puzzle faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.

Returning to my childhood home has opened my eyes to the value of my parents love for narrative. It’s a small wonder that I felt most at home among other English majors at college, and that my time as a legal intern is mostly spent sharing the crazy stories that come from the courtroom. I’m sure that someday in the distant future I’ll sit in my lay-z-boy and verbally curse when they replace Bones with an underappreciated cooking show, oblivious to the fact that I now carry a crossword puzzle in one hand and a Louis L’Amour book in the other as I mute the dagnab commercials.

The Commercials of Our Lives

Recently I’ve started charting the commercials I watch everyday. I started thinking about my life in terms of demographics because being a young, white male has affected me in various ways from admissions applications to surveys and employment, but I never thought of it in terms of commercials. See I watch a lot of TV. Unhealthy amounts of it. In fact I once tried to tally up all the movies that I’ve ever seen, different movies mind you, not multiple views, and I got lost in the 300s. Some of my favorite movies are black and whites on the 500s channel of our cable network. These channels often feature ads for Depends, power scooters and life insurance. I can tell you all about pills that will regulate your digestive system, or control your blood pressure. I can tell you which lawyers offer free consultations when those pills start to kill you. I can even tell you which retirement plans offer you the fastest way to Florida.

I think the commercials reveal far more about me than the TV shows I watch. Sure, watching Adam-12 means I like police shows. Of course watching Perry Mason means I like courtroom dramas. The real hard evidence lies in the fact that I can carry on a better conversation with a 60 year old than I can with a 16 year old. These young kids don’t know anything about Colonial Penn Life, or the Scooter Chair. The fact that I choose Charlie Chaplin’s silent films over Brain Regan boisterous youtube videos only strengthens the argument.

Sometimes I wonder how long this idiotic 3D trend will last. The commercials show happy families gloriously wearing their 3D glasses all cuddled up on the couch. The reality is that if I wanted to wear glasses to wear TV I would go through the trouble of using my fingers to put plastic contacts directly on my eyeballs. I made that sacrifice to save my nose from those embarrassing red marks, and to keep from having to wipe my glasses in the rain.

These same kinds of choices are made everyday by like-minded individuals who enjoy the freedom of Depends, the improved mobility of the Scooter Chair and the relief of a Colonial Penn Life insurance policy.

The Listerine Effect

Over Christmas my seven year old niece gave me a run-down of the more grievous sins I commit against the fashion world on a daily basis. First on her list were my low-riding pants, my flannel shirts and my general misunderstanding of color coordination. At her age I wore the same shirt to school everyday. Every morning I would put on a fresh clean shirt, eat breakfast, and make sure my mom saw me in my clean shirt. When it was time to go I would quickly change into my favorite shirt, zip up my jacket to the very top, and leave for school. This was the routine for four months until my mother had parent-teacher conferences and my teacher gave me away.

Soon thereafter my mother started me on a rigorous hygienic routine every morning. I learned about deodorant, mouthwash, flossing and the importance of a good soap. I showered every morning before this routine, but the daily showers were now part of a longer routine that remains a strict part of my life to this day. Every morning I get up, shower with two soaps, shave once with a mechanical razor and once with a normal razor, clean my ears with q-tips, rub on lotion then deodorant, floss, brush my teeth and use Listerine mouthwash. The routine is so much a part of my life that when I did my Eagle Scout project I made hygiene kits for little kids in Africa. The elimination of bodily smells was a gift from me to poor kids, who like me probably wore the same shirt to school everyday.

Body odor is a fairly recent problem, developing over about the last hundred years. Before the 1880s deodorant wasn’t even heard of, but it didn’t become popular until the 1920s. Before that people only showered once a week, usually in anticipation of the Sabbath. Now we have an entire section of the grocery store dedicated to eliminating various body odors.

Upon reading this title you may at first be impressed to think I will give you details of the kissing I’ve achieved through my use of Listerine, the mouthwash. Although false, this idea is not entirely inexcusable. Listerine was in fact originally designed to clean floors, cure gonorrhea, disinfect cuts or scrapes, act as an astringent and even eliminate dandruff. It was only later given to dentists as a mouthwash. Throughout its time serving as various cures and cleaners it never achieved popularity, so the marketing department in charge of the advertising set itself to make a change. They began advertising it as a cure for bad breath, and by extension the lonely bachelor’s heart. The new ads featured beautiful women asking their friends, “Can I marry him in spite of his bad breath?” One scholar said, “Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis.” Advertisers refer to this type of marketing as “selling the need.” The point is to shift the consumer’s paradigm in such a way that they realize this is the product that leads directly to their happiness. In the case of Listerine the direct happiness was popularity and marriage.

Once a person eliminated their halitosis issues, and found someone to celebrate it with, De Beers was there to market the next step. They decided to market their diamond engagement rings to future brides. If love should last forever the ring representing that love should too; and as we all know, “A Diamond is Forever.” Diamond-less engagement rings are rare these days, mostly because men are expected to represent their love with a few karats of forever.

As we start turning over the stones of our present circumstance we find that advertisements are shaping the world we consume. Marketing research is designed to do three things, identify the consumer, satisfy the consumer, and keep the consumer. It limits us to one of our most basic functions in its role as a profit-oriented science. The more or less recent developments of an ancient science are changing our world whether we see it or not. In essence we now have persuasion down to a science, an equation, a formula, a plug and chug concept. The market sells us the need, satisfies that need and keeps that need coming back. And they call us the consumers.

The average person in their early teens to late twenties will see around 5,000 ads every day. Of those ads, only two or three will be persuasive enough to work their way into the brain of a consumer, and only a handful of those ads will lead to a purchase. At best advertising is an investment in the human psyche, building towards that day that when the investment pays off in a purchase.

The movie Fight Club is the story of an insomniac who defines his life with Ikea furniture, asking himself which piece of furniture best satisfies his needs. When he can’t sleep he stays awake all night watching Ikea infomercials and creating what he calls his “nest.” Eventually he co-engineers a system of fight clubs that develop into a global project to destroy all the credit records in the world, eliminating the class system that has developed through materialism by leveling every consumer at zero. This is an extreme reaction.

My reaction is less ballistic. When I look for shoes I ask myself if I’m willing to pay an extra $80 dollars for shoes with a big check mark on them, or whether the soaring eagle on the front of my shirt says I am aware of the clothes I’m wearing. Part of the reason I started wearing flannel is there are no brands to display or advertise, but this is far from sticking it to the marketing man. They know I exist, and they have a scheme to get me to buy their clothing. Whatever I do I fall into the marketing trap, but I have to wear clothes, and I have to smell good, and I have to get a diamond engagement ring. I don’t have to ask myself what Ikea set defines me as a person, or whether the Nike check marks on my shoes mean I can run faster or jump higher.

A Certain Point of View

In the famed movie series Star Wars there are Jedi and there are Skywalkers. Luke and his father Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader are two developing Jedi who learn to use the force to fulfill their destiny. The final movie of the series, Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi, shows Luke struggling with the task of facing his father, who was once a powerful Jedi but has turned to the Dark Side of the Force, now the awe-inspiring Darth Vader. To help him fulfill his destiny Luke receives mentoring from two prominent Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. Obi-Wan tells Luke that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke’s father Anakin Skywalker, but Luke eventually learns the truth that Vader is Anakin, and therefore Luke’s father. When Luke confronts Obi-Wan about the discrepancies in his statement Obi-Wan tells him that it is true, from a certain point of view.

Blaise Pascal once said, “There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees, which are falsehoods on the other.” Anaïs Nin put it another way, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Luke struggles with this same concept as he approaches the confrontation with the Dark Side. He knows that the objectivity of truth is subject to perspective. His father sees the Jedi as wicked, while Luke sees the Empire as the essence of evil. His destiny involves choosing a perspective. This trend of multiple perspectives is a common literary theme, especially as we enter the twilight zone of postmodern fragmentation, which shows the truth of an event through multiple perspectives. Truth, defined through the term true, means the actual state of things. This clears up nothing. Actual defined, means existing in fact, and fact is defined as truth. This looping definition confirms Luke’s confusion because as an abstract concept, truth is subject to interpretation.

Eventually Luke confronts Emperor Palpatine, convinces Vader to return to the Good Side, and assists in bringing down the Empire. All in a day’s work, for a Jedi fulfilling his destiny. Luke’s ultimate success comes after he acts on the truth of his perspective. Through the Force he feels that his father, Anakin/Vader, has good in him however deeply buried it may be. Ignoring both Obi-Wan and Vader’s assertions that Anakin no longer exists within the dark psyche of Vader, Luke reveals the truth and brings his father back from the Dark Side. Luke’s success depends on his actions with regards to truth.

As I near the end of my college career I often contemplate the truths I’ve learned about the world. Mark Twain says, “Don’t let your schooling interfere with your education.” In my college career I’ve read approximately one hundred and seventeen books about a variety of subjects. I’ve read old books, new books, French philosophy books, books about cells, books about planets, and books about people. I’ve even read books about truth and success. There are books about financial success, marital success, career success, spiritual success, and how to navigate success. The truth is that schooling is fragmentation because it splits the world into perspectives. We study the world through economics, history, literature, mathematics, chemistry and philosophy. Each subject brings a different version of truth to the chalk board. School teaches you to take something and break it down into parts to better understand it as a whole. It brings the frog out of the swamp and places it under your knife, and the wonders of nature are dissected under your magnifying glass.

Education is the world teaching you how to use your schooling. It provides you with a set of truths, how to cook an egg, prune juice is for the elderly, no shirt no shoes no service, and don’t eat Chinese food after 9:30; all this because conformity resolves conflict. Growing up I used to sit in my dad’s courtroom and watch the lawyers argue the truth of a case in front of my judicial father, who defined the truth pertaining to the law for twenty five years. I sat at the prosecutor’s table hoping that the defendant wouldn’t notice the small brown-haired boy with curiosity in every passing glance. I would listen to people who were on trial for violating the heaviest rules of a society obsessed with truth. Some were dressed in orange prison suits, with handcuffed hands and feet. Some were covered in tattoos, others looked like my neighbors, some were old, others young. I was afraid of them all.

In court the attorneys represent both sides of the issue. The judge hears both sides of the issue, and researches the precedents involved after which she makes two decisions. The first is called the rule, or the black letter law, which is a general rule applied to a variety of situations. The rule resolves the issue on a general level, meant for society as a whole. The second decision, the holding, resolves the specific case at hand. Sometimes the rule and the holding agree, sometimes they do not. This may look like a clean cut process, like cooking soup or making a bowl of cereal, but it’s messy. The research takes weeks, the language is exact and the explanations run on for pages. Truth merits long explanations and succinct wording.

As I prepare myself for law school I wonder how my perspective will change the truths we accept as society. How will I decide between two truths as represented by either side of an issue? If our fragmented sense of truth is valid from each perspective which one is most valid? I think of my father, with his judicial robes, and focused facial expression and wonder how he knew. I think of my schooling, the dissected frogs, the endless book count, and the chemistry lab accidents and hope that I can piece together the fragments to form some kind of whole truth that will give me a standard to judge against. I hope that I can link into some greater source of truth that will make my choices clearer, and help me to see which Vaders can be rescued. For now I can grasp the truth that other perspectives are more truthful than my own.

The Death of Myspace Inspires Turtles Everywhere

Recently the social networking site Myspace gave up the competitive ghost, and rose out of the ashes with a new musically oriented purpose, providing a worldwide gateway for up and coming music groups. The founding concept behind Myspace reminds me of an essay by an intelligently wordy French philosopher named Michel de Certeau. In his article “The Practice of Everyday Life” de Certeau defines the tension between place and space with the presence of action. He claims that people transform a dead place into a live space by acting within the designated boundaries that define the two. Think of my bedroom before I moved in, the blank walls, empty closet, and general cleanliness. This is the definition of place, the walls are boundaries, there is a map of it somewhere, and the room exists regardless if I live there or not. To make it my space I hung a few posters of The Black Keys, put my Atlanta Braves sheets on the bed, and left Crunch wrappers all over the floor. My actions have transformed this place into my space.

Being a college student means that my place is exceptionally small. Everything I own fits into an area of 50 square feet. De Certeau argues that space is place-dependent, or that space can only exist within a designated place. Here’s an example: my family descends from a long line of Swedish dirt farmers who handed the farm from one son to the next. They stayed in the same small town in Southern Sweden for almost five generations. I’ve seen the farm, and stayed there for a week when I was twelve. My father and I worked the land, we saw the hand-built stone fences, and ate the cheese made from the cow’s milk. The family farm has been preserved as both our family place and our family space. Following this line of thought, and de Certeau’s argument, my space would be slightly smaller than 15 square feet, but it’s not. I have moved 16 times in the last 5 years, meaning that I am, in every sense of the word, displaced, but I am not dis-spaced. Times have changed, and the farm isn’t handed down from son to son anymore; and the concept represented by an individual’s space has changed over the fifty years since de Certeau issued his claim. The internet has allowed people to connect their space wirelessly to every place where they find themselves.

For example, my blog is defined as a digital place. It has an address on the blogspot network, where I started with a blank template. Given time I’ve modified the template, changed the colors, put up essays, embedded music videos, essentially creating my digital space; a space that I can access from any place, at almost any time. My iPod also represents a mobile space that I have created, with the ability to create a space of any temporary place through which I pass.

Enter the death and rebirth of Myspace. The digital frontier has allowed us to expand our space, and nourish its mobility. With every advance along the frontier we become more like a turtle, carrying our space on our backs, moving from place to place. Turtles move slowly because where they are is the place where they need to be. Their space follows them, transforming temporary places into spaces under their feet. The connectivity of our space makes us all turtles. Like the shell, we use our space for comfort, protection and shelter. It provides a cushion in our interaction with other spaces. We represent it with brand names, with clothing styles, the music emanating from it, and the people we invite to enter or leave it.

Personally I spend hours every day maintaining and grooming my space. I decorate it with colors, or share it when I put an ad in the paper that says, “Brown-haired male with taste for The Black Keys seeks like-minded female.” The creators of Myspace understood the concept of interacting spaces, so they created a site that encouraged opportunities to explore other spaces on an unprecedented scale, and with minimum effort. They took the business of everyday life to the digital frontier, and mobilized space for the displaced like myself.
As the mobility of our spaces has increased we are entering an age when we work for the opposite of what de Certeau asserted; we manage our space in order to obtain a place. Recently I’ve started my applications for law school. Each law school has a number of seats, or places, available to those willing to brave the competition. The goal is to make your space unique enough that it warrants you a place in the school. To this end I’ve started a creative nonfiction blog, provided community service on vast fronts and taken a variety of college courses to round out my academic representation. The application process exists to invite the application board into your space, where they will make a judgment as to your priority placement in the school. Once accepted and enrolled you start school by mixing your space with those of other students in a newly designated place for the next three years.

This business of newly designated place is as old as Adam and Eve. Whenever a couple marries they merge their spaces and create the family space. We can extrapolate this to a national level with the Constitution is a document largely regulating space on an individual, state and federal level, and international level with hundreds of nations fighting to protect their space against those who would impose another form of space. Movies and television reveal the possibilities included with expanding our space into the galaxy, where space becomes a concept beyond our finite comprehension.

What does all this mean to my space? I’m just a college kid with 50 square feet of rented place, and dreams of larger possibilities. It means that what I thought I was designing, defining and maintaining is actually shaping me and how the world defines me as an individual. My place in the world depends on how I use my space to represent who I am and what I intend to do with more of it. With that thought in mind do I change how I represent my space? I could start with a six-pack and biceps, or brand name clothing, or maybe the right pair of eye-glasses. I realize now that I won’t do any of that. I’m even tempted to delete my facebook account because it distracts me from exploring my own space. It dawns on my now that by knowing my own space, I’ll find the place I’m looking for. Where I am now is where I need to be, just like the other turtles.

What Separates Us From the Aliens

Everybody has their theory explaining why Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is the greatest space movie ever. I like my hypothesis best, mainly that the aliens wear clothes. There is a disturbing trend among alien movies that has invading aliens attacking earth in the buff, for all the universe to gawk at. Yes, this is the ultimate insult to a potential victim of your warring society, "We're so confident that we'll conquer your little planet that we don't worry about armor, let alone clothing." Is there some running alien bet to see who can be the first civilization to successfully conquer earth while naked?

Worse is the knowledge that in the future mankind resorts to some universally accepted and approved onesie spandex suit, usually made of a space-age shiny gray material. Here we are on earth walking around in hip-hugging space blankets, fighting the naked aliens. Of course, Al Gore invents the space suit, which he knows we need on account of the global warming issue.

What really separates us from the aliens is our ability to wear a pair of pants. Think about it. The spandex suit spells defeat. Pants spell freedom. Freedom to wear what we like, how we like and at what cost we like. The best of all pants are blue jeans.

Blue jeans as we know them originally came out of the mining camps of California, right around the year 1849. Levi Strauss gave them rivets, which strengthened them so that the miners could work all day in the rivers, in tough work pants that were also comfortable. They're weren't universally accepted as casual wear until about the '70s. This is mostly due to the fact that James Dean wore them in Rebel Without a Cause, inspiring the youth of the '60s to rebel against society and wear blue jeans. My old man says their jeans used to be banned from schools and theaters for representing the rebellious spirit.

Now days we have every kind of blue jean imaginable. They all serve relatively the same purpose, but everybody has their own style. Take skaters, for example. Back in my day skaters wore their jeans baggy and low for a very simple purpose. When you have a board flying every which way there are occasionally times when it hits a very private and sacred body part. The bagginess protects and cushions against such life-threatening blows. This is another reason why the trend of skinny jeans is disturbing among today's modern skateboarders.

Cowboys and trendy girls like to wear their jeans as tight as possible. They battle their jeans on every morning, something I could never do. Most girls and some scary boys know all the brands and types. There are different washes, cuts and stitching patterns, all representing something about the legs that wear them. I don't really know any of this, mind you, but I've heard rumors the differences exist. My girlfriend knows which jeans to wear to make your butt look good, or to show off your legs. She knows the stitching, the prices of the stitchings, and what stitchings say you didn't pay a very high price to have your jeans sewn together. Some people don't want to pay the price for the stitching so they will gamble 6-8 months in orange polyester prison pants against the small odds of successfully thieving them from Nordstrom, or like-minded stores. My dad hates these people.

Me, I wear mine a little low. Ok, a lot low. Pretty, really low. I take some heat for it, but I'm not inclined to change. Unlike Mike, the levi jeans guy, I'm not out to make the world notice my butt. That is my prerogative, and I will separate myself from the aliens by taking advantage of it. I don't know what the stitching on my butt pockets says, but I know they are some comfortable pants. I could sleep in my jeans and not miss a beat. Sometimes I run in jeans, other times I sit in my jeans. They are very durable. Thank you Mr Strauss, you riveted my pants so I don't have to buy more for a long time. I even wear my pants as intended. See Strauss and company marketed them to be worn as a sort of waist overalls without straps, a.k.a. loose and low. Let the aliens look and be jealous.

When the day comes that the spandex suit is voted into being I will resist all day and night to keep my pants. Everybody wearing the same suit won't scare away the naked aliens. What the aliens really want is our pants. Pure and simple. They are the best for symbolizing rebellion against conformity. That's why everybody has them. That's why aliens want them. A pants-wearing rebellion will always trump a pant-less invasion.

So pay more attention to your pants. Thank them for your freedom, and the way they express it so willingly.