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July 16, 2004

Yippee!

I'm going to be on a panel with Neil Gaiman!

Go here for details...

Posted by StephenRauch at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2004

Warning: Geek Alert

Just saw the new Spider-Man last night.

So, um, when did Spidey become so damn emo?

I swear, I know Spider-Man's always done the "no one likes me" thing, but was it always this whiny? I kept wanting to just smack each one of the characters. ("Harry, sit down and listen to me. I'm sorry about your father, but he was the Green Goblin. Remember that psychopath on the flying skateboard that almost blew the hell out of you and Mary Jane, and then disappeared RIGHT AT THE EXACT SAME TIME your dad died? That was him. He impaled himself on his rocket-thing while trying to kill me. I'm also sorry about "stealing" MJ from you, despite the fact that we never dated at all, and it was like two years ago and you still haven't gotten over it. Not to mention the fact that you seem to have just gone out with her to make me feel lousy, since you knew I'd been in love with her since preschool. Geez, what a jerk. Get some therapy or something.")

And did anyone else notice how they gave Spidey the horn-rimmed glasses? And the turtleneck sweater? And the thing with the poetry? I kept waiting for him to pull out one of those over-the-shoulder tote bags. If only he could have written a song about his tortured love for Mary Jane, and performed it for her at the coffee house…And if he did date MJ, could she possibly be in any more danger than she already is with him "protecting" her?

Also, what the hell happened to the police? Spider-Man quits for like a week and crime goes up by 75%? I mean, these aren't super-villains he's foiling; they're regular criminals. And not too bright ones, from the look of it.

(Doesn't the NYPD know that if we'll only let them keep sodomizing black immigrants if they keep the crime rate down? That's the deal; IT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION, PEOPLE! Am I the only one who keeps track of these things?)

Sheesh, what a shame. After so many hideous comic-book movies, they finally get some decent actors and a director who's not a total ass-clown (pretty much hasn't happened since Tim Burton), and it comes out so, I don't know, by the numbers. Even Bruce Campbell's cameo was pretty lifeless. On the other hand, you can see why Dark Knight and Watchmen needed to happen. Spider-Man's so busy with bank robbers, he's never going to go after the billionaires and government-connected corporate scumfucks who actually cause everything. Where's Frank Miller when you need him?

(On a side note, is the phrase "nipple erection" actually written in Kirsten Dunst's contract for these movies?)

Posted by StephenRauch at 08:57 PM | Comments (1)

July 07, 2004

What now?

So we all went through our nihilist period. Learned that everything we've been raised to believe in – everything anyone's believed in for a long time – is a big lie. We know the government lied to us, and the Church is at best irrelevant and at worst truly malicious, and our parents fucked us up in all kinds of ways. We even had a mass media-approved tag for it: Generation X. A whole generation dedicated to righteous indignation at the failure of God, Country, and Family to do anything other than screw us over. 'Cause, y'know, it does take some getting used to.

So what now? Once we've brought everything crashing down and hit bottom, where do we go from there?

Two possibilities:

The first would be to go back to Daddy. Decide things aren't as bad as we thought they were. Sure, they made some mistakes, but they had our best interests at heart. And if anything bad happened to us, we probably deserved it anyway.

Popular choice. Look at the "USA: Love it or Leave it" crowd. What should we apologize for? We're the greatest country in the world! Or join (or rejoin) one of your approved-Big-3-Western-monotheistic religions. It does seem young people are turning to youth ministries in record numbers. "Look, we just think that the way our parents' generation did things was just a little too…permissive. It feels so much better to have some clear rules."

And I understand. Really I do. It feels much safer in the cage. But what if you can't go back? If you've burned too many bridges and it's just too painful and too close to home and too near the bone?

Then you've got to make something new.

How? Hell, I don't know. Ransack the past. Take what's worth holding onto and jettison the rest. Most of it's just a way to keep old battles and hatreds alive anyway. Go somewhere quiet enough you can actually hear what you want. Look at who could, if push came to shove, make you do something you didn't want to. Ask: are they really worth submitting to? Or have they just been telling you what to do for so long you forgot it was them talking and not you?

What would you do if you only got one shot at life, and you don't know how long you have, and it really mattered? How long are you willing to wait for your life to start?

'Cause me, I'm tired of being angry. Tired of only thinking about how much I've been fucked over by God or Dick Cheney or psychiatry or the upper 1% or a bunch of people who died so long ago their names don't even matter. It's all bullshit? That's old news. Tell me something I don't know. I'm busy building a life here.

You can't feel cheated forever, you know.

Posted by StephenRauch at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)

What if we never fell?

Really. No snake, no apple, no cherub with the flaming sword blocking the way. If instead of a disgraced, broken shadow of what it should have been, the world was just, well, how it is? And if it's not how it's supposed to be, it was our job to make it that way?

What if we just forgot to keep reminding ourselves how bad and small and weak and dirty we are? For just long enough for it to start to wear off? What could we do? And if instead of our being unworthy to receive Him, He was just us all along?

What if we spent all of our time looking for salvation and truth and beauty, and never noticed it's been here all along? That it's everywhere: we just learned not to see? And who made us think that?

Just a thought.

Posted by StephenRauch at 04:27 AM | Comments (0)