(500) Days of Pure Evil

OK, this one has been a long time coming, so I figured I would take a break from playing Plant vs. Zombies, studying Greek and checking email in order to bring you this well thought out and coherent (ahem) essay explaining why 500 Days of Summer is a horrible, awful, no good, very bad movie. You all had better appreciate it! (insert sarcastic wink here)

Now, as a second preface, I must say that I had been looking forward to this movie for a long, long time. I think it might have even been one of those films that got me stuck in the paper mill of advertising, and I was near salivating to see it. (Wow, that's kind of a disgusting metaphor.) On top of that I am an enormous Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan, Brick and Inception being in my top 15 favorite films. So by the time it came to our little second run theater here in Moscow late summer '09, there was pretty much no way anyone was going to stop me from going.

I went alone... which in retrospect was probably for the best. I'm not sure I would be comfortable watching that movie with anyone at this point in my life. I would either be embarrassed, break down crying, try to kill everyone in the room, shield my friends' eyes, or perhaps attempt to do all four simultaneously. I am not to be held accountable for anything I do to you while watching this movie.

Now that I'm done ranting (no I'm not), I'll beginning with my logical explanation:

The movie starts with not the opening credits, but a dedication of sorts... kind of like at the beginning of a book. "For my dog Frank, who was always there for me," or "To my Dad, for keeping me honest," or something of that sort. The opening dedication for 500 Days of Summer goes a little something like this:

"Author's Note: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Especially you Jenny Beckman... Bitch."

Hmmm... bitter much?

While watching it for the first time (to this date the only time I have been able to watch the film in its entirety. I tried again a few months later, but was unable to get further than the 30 minute mark), I promptly forgot this first warning sign and watched on... very sure that this film was describing my heart-broken life in all its bitter detail.

The film begins with the classic boy meets girl. Tom works as a greeting card writer in a fashionable part of L.A. Summer begins working there as a secretary. Tom and Summer are very different. "How?" you ask? Well, let me put this as bluntly as possible: Tom's a girl, and Summer's a dude. Yes, it's weird; no, it's not what you think. Let me explain:

Tom is a sensitive guy. Not only is he sensitive, but he's whiny, needy, "in touch" with his emotions, and is kind of pathetic. He's clingy, and obnoxious, and all the things that guys really find gross and unattractive in women. Tom is a guy technically, but he represents all the bad stereotypes of women.

Summer is a head-strong girl. Not only is she head-strong, but she's immature, cavalier, sexually obsessed, and doesn't really see the point of committing to a relationship when you could just "have fun." Summer is a girl technically, but she represents all the bad stereotypes of guys that women hate.

The movie would be bad enough if it was Tom being the sex-obsessed guy, and Summer being the whiny girl. In fact, I am pretty sure that if that movie were ever pitched to any forward thinking Hollywood production company they would reject it outright, their brains bleeding after they hemorrhaged at hearing such a horrible and stupid idea. So why, when the gender roles are reversed, is it suddenly acceptable, and not only acceptable but cool and a movie worthy of putting on film critics' "Best Movies of the Year" lists?

In the end the relationship explodes (duh) after a conversation where Summer compares them both to Sid and Nancy (if you don't know who Sid and Nancy are, click here, then come back and read the rest of my rant/essay/reviewishthingy). Tom is offended by such a comparison and retorts: "But Sid stabbed Nancy with a knife! I hardly think I'm Sid Vicious!"

"Noooooo...." Summer replies. "I'M Sid."

"Oh... so I'm Nancy," Tom says, a little dazed.

The gender flipping is explicitly referenced here. How could it be missed? Soon after, Summer tells Tom that the relationships should probably end. The sex has been good, but Summer still doesn't believe in "love." What a mature, upstanding woman.

For the last half-an-hour or so of the film, Tom follows Summer around like a pitiful puppy dog, until he at last learns that she's gotten engaged. Tom (with good reason) is incredulous. Summer talks him down though, reassuring him that he taught her what love really was... he just wasn't the right guy for her. They share a tender moment where Summer encourages Tom to pursue his dream of becoming an architect instead of a greeting card writer, and then she leaves.

The final scene is Tom waiting for an interview at an architecture firm. While waiting he meets one of the other applicants, a girl... they agree to meet for coffee. And with the final credits fast approaching, Tom calls out as she's walking away:

"What's you name?"

"Autumn!" she calls back.

To quote a friend of mine: Really? REALLY??? How am I supposed to believe, or have any kind of faith that either of them really learned anything at all? How do you know that Tom will grow a skin and not get his heart torn out by Autumn too? The name kind of implies that the cycle is just continuing. What about Summer? When the sex isn't good anymore, won't she just dump her shiny new play thing and move on to whatever is the newer, shinier thing? The sequel would probably begin with them just as broken and hallow and empty as they were when they first broke up.

The film is not about real life.... well it is, but not the right kind. It really does represent where our wonderful world is headed: Men chickening out, and women taking the lead... or becoming really screwed up versions of men as the case may be. But that is not the way that God created the world. The version of the world that 500 Days of Summer portrays is badly broken, and not something we should emulate. Not only that, but it is not something we should enjoy watching either. The first time I watched it, it simply induced a pity party of supernova proportions. Living in the suckiness of the past is a lame way to live your life, however accurately or inaccurately the film might portray past events of your life. Get out of yourself. No... life is not all about you. There is more to this life than sex and getting instant gratification, or simply getting, getting, getting from a relationship. Where's the give? Where is the givING for that matter?

I have fallen into the self-pity trap more times than I can count. There is no getting around that. But instead of that hurting my ethos, I hope strengthens my exhortation to the small number of readers that I have: I've been there. I've done that. Don't fall into the horrible, horrible stereotypes of this film. Read your Bible... there are some pretty good stereotypes to live up to in there.

All that said... I may still go to work for a greeting card company someday.

BOOK

There's a book I carry around with me a lot. I was told the other night that it is a book of magic spells. I had never thought of it as such before, but I suppose that it makes sense.

Many of the pages are bent and twisted, but none of them are ripped (yet). It's green, but the binding on the outside has started to fade to black in the places where the nicer parts of the cover have worn away.

My friends quote it more than Harry Potter or the latest movie. I'm pretty sure that some people I know have burned copies of it.

There are lots of things that I've added to it. Not words, mind you. If I added any words to it, it wouldn't be the same book. But there are many things in it now that were not there when I first received it. There are many scraps of paper sticking out at funny angles. Some of them torn from notebooks, some notes from lectures, one is florescent pink. There is blood in the book now. There is salt residue from my tears. There is highlighter on my favorite sections, and there is grease from my thumbs.

I hope that when I die, it is found close by my side. It's a magic book. The deep magic.

Nothing Quite Like It

The strangest things can take you out of yourself. As humans, fallible and fallen, we often focus inward, looking for something to cling to. That thing may be good or bad (at least our perception of it seems so), but in reality it is usually bad. Introspection has a brother, his name is Selfishness.

Grocery shopping in a haze of numb stupidity, I notice a boy, small even from a 8 year-old's point of view, running around the snack section screaming. Following close behind is a man with the happiest and good natured of faces. He is yelling almost as loud as the boy.

I stop what I'm doing and just watch, a smile spreading across my face as I do so. A father and son, playing, rejoicing, completely oblivious to the shoppers surrounding them. If an attendant of the store had tried to interrupt them, I doubt that either of the two would have paid any attention what-so-ever.

Stop looking inside. Look out. Pay attention.

God the girlfriend

“You’re my escape/ From this messed up place/ Cuz you let me forget/ you numb my pain/ How can I tell you just all that you are/ What you do to me/ You’re better than drugs/ Addicted for life/ Feel you coming on so fast/ Feel you coming on to get me high”

Sounds like a perverted cross between Song of Solomon and a heroin dream, right? No…they’re the lyrics to a song by on of the largest “Christian rock” bands out there: Skillet. The song, for all the average kid in the average youth group can figure, is about how much the singer needs God… or a girl, or his next drug fix.

The problem is not simply in the music that we listen to, however, but it is now in the way we think. Recently, a friend of mine posted something about having a new girlfriend on Facebook. The comment was rather ambiguous, something to the effect of: “Whatshisface has a special someone now!” That by itself would not have bothered me at all, but it was one of the comments that followed the original post that worried me. A mutual friend of me and this guy (we’ll call him Bob) posts a reply saying: “OMG! Like… it’s Jesus isn’t it?”

Too often since the advent of Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) nominal Christians everywhere have started referring to God in the shallow and demeaning terms of drugs, ambiguous girlfriends and feel good kicks. Not very edifying terms to use when referring to the Almighty Creator of the universe. And now, even stronger Christians, secure in their faith and walk, are falling into this trap. We must stop.

If anything, the way we address the relationship we have with Jesus Christ should be the other way around. The Church is the bride of Christ; Christ is not the girlfriend of the individual Christian. He is not there to make you “feel good” and take away all your problems. This is by and large one of the huge and dangerous symptoms of charismatic theology: theology based on feelings. Feel good, you’re doing pretty well spiritually. Feel bad? Well, then you probably screwed up somewhere.

At the beginning of John 9, Jesus and His disciples come across a blind man who has been blind from birth. The Disciples immediate question is: “Who, sinned Lord, this man or his parents?” “Neither,” Jesus replies. "But this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

Hard times are used for God’s glory, not always because we did something wrong. We are married to Christ, He is not here to make us feel good, or give us a pick me up or a temporary solution to temporary pain. He is here to provide salvation. He is here to save us. The end of the world is a wedding, and Christ is the one putting the ring on our figure. It’s not the other way around.

Learning to Keep Our Mouths Shut

I will readily admit that I do not do this enough myself, but I am changing that. And I thought I would just let everyone know a little bit about cultural differences, false assumptions and how they can both lead to miscommunication and hurt feelings.

First off, I'd like to clarify something with all my American readers: people from other countries like being from other countries. No, by and large, they do not want to be Americans. I am specifically talking about Canadians here. They are very content in their Canadianness, and do not need to be convinced otherwise. Telling a Canadian that they are practically an American for whatever reason is rather offensive.

One thing that we should remember is that our bias is showing. Often I speak out of ignorance, because I never bothered to learn about a different culture or event, etc. Only afterward do I realize that what I said was just because I am an American and should have known better. We need to keep this firmly in mind: as Americans, we are kind of oafish, and much of this comes from the vocal seculars and from our leaders. A good picture of this is Israel and their decline throughout the last half of the Old Testament. If the king was bad, the nation as a whole started to decay rapidly. This seems to be true of any nation, just look at Nero or Constantine. I know that those are extreme examples, but the point remains the same.

As Americans, we ought to realize that we often have a negative stigma, and come off a certain way to people of other nationalities. As Christians, we should be fighting that. We should be like the faithful few in Israel and be kind and considerate hosts and helpers. We should be looking for opportunities to display our better qualities.

I was at a wedding a few days ago, a Irish/French/American wedding, with a French and an American pastor officiating. And during the toasts at the reception, both pastors gave a brief toast. The American pastor's was quickly forgotten when the French pastor stood up and gave his blessing:

"The Irish are known for their loyalty, the French are known for their love of life, and Americans are known for their generosity. May you both be blessed with all three."

I chewed on his words for a long while. "Americans? Generous? Could it be?" But it's true, American CHRISTIANS are some of the most open-hearted, generous people I have ever met. May this truly be said of more of us. May we let our generosity speak more often than our mouths do.

Never insult a Canadian...

...they're probably smarter than you are.

Rain

It's really raining now. Coming down in steady, even droplets. Not sheets. We never get sheets of rain here in Idaho. Any rain at all in October is a rare occurrence, as we practically live in a desert. This summer was brutal. The crops of wheat and snow peas get all their hydration from the winter snows, which apparently provide enough moisture to keep them growing all year. In fact, I've heard that too much rain around this time of year will ruin them.

Not only is it getting wetter and colder, the days are starting to shorten. Sun doesn't come up as early as it used to a week ago. I know this because I wake up a sunrise... usually. This morning I technically should have gotten up before the sun. I didn't.

School is nearly empty. While on a summer night you might walk through the halls and hear the small "cricket, cricket" of the silence. Now it seems more like a cave. Dark, a little dank, but a solitary shelter from the wet drip outside. A few more animals have decided to huddle in the cave with you... but here, there be dragons. Errrr... I mean finals.

Compared to the beginning of the week, the school is kind of dead. "Kind of," what a pathetic, measly sort of descriptor, wheezing on death's doorstep. I can think of better adjectives, but finals week is drawing near a close and stronger metaphors I cannot think of.

Pulling my headphones off, I breathe in the sudden silence that replaces the raucous punk music that was being intravenously fed into my blood stream. I sigh a little. There are a few squeaking doors, the far off sound of a generator, the whoosh of cars splashing through puddles outside. And of course, the ever-present "clickity, clickity, click" of my fingers on the keys.

Fall Sets Up Shop

So the uncomfortably warm season we all call "Indian Summer" has set to flight at last, and fall proper is now upon us. The rain the past few days helped greatly. Waking up to the pitter-patter of drops on the sidewalk 12 feet below you is always a pleasant way to wake up... except that it rarely helps the getting out of bed portion of the morning, which usually follows waking up.

Some of the more extravagant and vain leaves changed colors early, sometime in early September, but most are still clinging to immortality and refusing to lose their grip on the oaks that line the very crooked streets of Moscow, Idaho. I don't blame them. If my life span were only in the single digits, I'd cling to my last few moments of life a little longer too.

The buses buzz around the small granary town like over-fat bumblebee drones hovering around a bee hive, ferrying people from the outer edges of town into the small, yet quaint downtown.

The downtown is harsh to small businesses though. It's a great spot for hippies and hipsters to chill, grab a cup of coffee, smoke some weed and show off how culturally relevant they are.

Pitter-patter. The rain soaks the rabidly thirsty ground. Pitter-patter. Feet in the puddles.

Even the people that sell weed are having a hard time. The corner shop at 6th and Main just shut down. Its preferred facade was pretending that it was a flower/gift shop. The odd hours gave it away though. I always knew they sold a lot more than your average roses and daisies. But hard times fall on the druggie and the sober alike. Mikey's gyros are more addictive anyway. A hippie can do without drugs as long as he can get his fix of organic Greek food.

There are a lot of twenty-somethings wandering around downtown in robes. If it weren't for the midwest/northwest American feel of the town, you might guess that you were wandering around the set of the latest Harry Potter movie. But it's just the NSA students. No, not National Security Agency, but New Saint Andrews... a name that was not so subtly plagiarized from a college across the pond with the same name.

It would take a lot to explain where New Saint Andrews College came from, where it's going and why it's still around. Suffice to say that they run on the quarter system, having four terms of eight weeks each every year. Hence, now is final exams.

The leaves dry up on the ground as the sun comes out. The warmth, however, doesn't come back. I feel like I'm stepping on Lay's chips every foot I put forward. Now I'm craving salt.

Three exams down, three to go.

Indian Summer

I'm not sure quite how I feel about this time of year. The days are too hot... but that's only by comparison to what one would expect from an Idaho fall. It's not hot in comparison to say....... the Sahara. But expectations can have powerful weight, so days are rather frustrating. It's like a mini purgatory between summer and fall.

The nights, on the other hand, are wonderful. Especially if you can drive a few miles out of town around 7 PM just for the heck of it. Roll the windows down. Smell the leaves, the BBQ, that fresh coat of paint the neighbors put on their house just a few hours ago.

Soak up the random acts of vandalism. Why yes, the college kids are back in town and have nothing better to be doing. Watch as a cop takes pictures of the gooped up cars, while you take goo-gone to your own car's siding.

The end of the week, you're still alive, and you know that the Indian summer can't last that much longer. Can it?