a good title is good to find

one of the only reasons this blog still exists right now, without frequent posting, is because i like the title so much.

i like the idea of this blog, meant to encourage me to write, being called "Written Off"

its an excellent title really. just witty enough for a blogful of wit (that, i admit, does not exist yet.)

Written Off: a blog about writing.
i identify it somewhat with the phrase "pissed off," which i find kind of funny, and will use as a title if i ever decide to catalogue my peeing experiences online (so don't steal it.)

i am also a literary outsider -- that is, i have never been published, much less completed a manuscript of anything...and therefore, as a writer, it is easy to be....well, you get the idea.

originally i was going to title this blog "Writing Off"...but the comparison to the phrase "Jerking Off" was too ready...and i didn't want this to be a place of the writing equivalent of public masturbation.....or at least for people to realize that it was such a place initially.

anyways, i am fascinated by a good title, a good name. they say not to judge a book by its cover, but if it has a good title on it i'm half inclined to read it. the catch phrase potentiality of it is mystical to me -- that and the fact that it can stand for the summation of a book, it can be the significance of it. i want to write a book where every line is good enough to be its title. i love titled chapters as well, and i especially love books and chapters of books that begin with a quote from another work -- the network of meaning produced is like summoning a ghost of meaning that haunts the read of a work -- you can't touch it or define it, but its there, and you know it, and the author knows it, and it unlocks portals to secret underworlds of meaning.

one of the other genres of naming is that of the band name. sometimes i'll be in the shower, or driving through a crappy section of town, and a phrase will punch me in the brain as being extremely catchy and fluid-in-the-mouth-of-an-MTV-newanchor-like -Tabitha-Soren-or-Serena-Altshcul. i want to be in a band. i have no musical inclination other than i love music, and i can sing a little. but i want to be in a band that is as good as U2 and Radiohead, and will go down in history as one of the greatest bands ever, and when i think of forming it, it of course will need a good name. the name would have to reflect the members, naturally. i was thinking of forming my theoretical band with my lesbian-roommate and her intended, and calling it Mother Mayhem.

is that not a catchy name? not bad at least.

a mostly lesbian band named Mother Mayhem. its cool. and kind of funny. like "mother may i?" gone wrong. and it has the ring of some kind of 80's chick rocker metal band, but we would play music that is mostly acoustic and like Over the Rhine or 10,000 maniacs, with a boy singer.

its such a cool name to me, that it would be a shame to waste.

drummers, cellists, and bassists wanted. prodigies welcome. no egoes please.

using War of the Worlds to reconsider Spielberg

time for a new post, which i anticipate is going to be just as much about how i review movies as it is about the movie i'm reviewing.

so, i went to the drive-thru with my girlfriend sunday night to catch both War of the Worlds and The Longest Yard; and i liked them. on to business:

War of the Worlds
Summer? check. Big budget sci-fi? check. "Cute" kid? check. --sniff-- Ah, that's a Spielberg all right.

first of all, let me come clean about my feelings regarding Spielberg. I haven't seen all of his movies, but growing up in the Spielberg era i've seen most of them (and know the rest through osmosis), and i'm convinced that in some way that must qualify me to talk about his work on some level. I understand that he's a guy a lot of people love to hate, particularly film purists and those bemoaning the advent and arrival of hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. But a lot of that is backlash and bullshit. Spielberg has made some great films, and even the ones that haven't been so great are at the very least entertaining -- which is something i feel like a lot of critics forget the merit of, but we'll get to that later. i understand both sides of the argument though; he is like that girl in your philosophy of literature class who is sometimes really datably intelligent, but you mostly think about the fact that she has all the right elements for a good romp.

Which War of the Worlds is, more or less. Well, its actually stuck somewhere between that really classic Spielberg movie, and the simply entertaining one. you know how he makes three kinds of movies, right? there's the "Classic"Spielberg movies: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T.; "Entertaining" Spielberg movies: Catch Me If You Can, Jaws; "Profound" Spielberg movies: Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List. (for the record A.I. can't be classed in one of these categories, unless we make a fourth one called "Anomalous"). While there might be some dispute over what movies belong in or coinhabit which categories, no one is pretending that War of the Worlds is Schindler's List, and we're all fine with that. so...where does it fit?

ok, let me come even more clean about Spielberg: i hate the fact that people hate him, just because he symbolizes something -- you consider the man's work, for God's sake. but......there's also this nagging thing in the back of my head that wants to wave him off with a flick of my wrist and sneer, and i'm not sure what it is. i have never not enjoyed watching a Spielberg movie. that one and a half to three hours i spend watching his work always finds me happy. but when the house lights come up or the tv goes off, somehow the memory of his work is less effective. This, interestingly enough, is also what happens whenever i watch Tom Cruise. they always deliver, no question about that. but eventually the ubiquitousness of the both of them tends to get to me, tempts me to to say "yeah, its good, but..."....and then i can't fill in the elipses.

the Spielberg movies that generally don't slip away into the oblivion of my disregard (and i'm assuming the same for most people) are those of the "classic" category -- a category which is unique to this particular director. his "classic" movies capture some numinous emotional quality on film that somehow amounts to more than its whole, or the physical artefact of the movie -- it really is an experience. the interesting thing about movies in Spielberg's "classic" category is they rarely need dialogue. they might contain it, but it all (intentionally?) shoots around the emotional mark that the visuals seem to nail.

Also, they often deal with children and use family "situations" as a backdrop. i've heard Spielberg talk about the "emotional core" of a story which makes special effects spectaculars relatable to an audience, and the things everyone can relate to is being a kid and family turmoil.

War of the Worlds contains both of these elements in some measure: it is obviously a visual movie, but its emotional peaks need no dialogue to punctuate them. the most terrifying parts of the movie for me are the human moments: a mob that rips Tom Cruise's character and his children out of a mini-van and nearly tears them apart; the off-screen deed that he commits to protect his daughter. And i was impressed with Spielberg's choices about what to leave undepicted, despite the tendancy of sci-fi films to exploit the visual medium. the spectacle might overshadow the subtlety, but its there, if you keep an eye out for it (consider the fact we only get to see what the aliens look like in two brief scenes that take place well into the movie's running time). the cinematography is interesting; there are some strangely choreographed sequences which seem to go against getting to the "reality" of what such an invasion might be like, but it also brings a creepy surreality to the screen, making for an eery juxtaposition of familiar and not-familiar.

Lastly, Tom Cruise is top notch in this movie -- i like to see him cast against type as this character. he really is a deadbeat dad; he'd be an all right guy if it wasn't for the fact that he had kids he didn't take care of, and he does a great job with the character -- not too sympathetic, not too distasteful. Dakota Fanning on the other hand....she is talented, but would have been better cast in this movie three or four years ago. i assume she was cast because she is considered to be hollywood's cute-kid-with-acting-chops of the moment, but in this movie she is just old enough to not be "cute" anymore, and her dialogue could have desperately used some cuteness. Also, the character of "little precocious blonde girl" is a direct reference to Drew Barrymore in E.T. (keep an eye on hair and wardrobe), and i think meant to highlight the fact that War of the Worlds is a counterpoint to that movie.

War of the Worlds skirts the line between classic Spielberg and entertaining-but-insignificant-Spielberg. it has those traditional classic elements, but in the end i don't know if the "emotional core" transfigures the movie or is contained by it: the answer to that question might be up to time, or box office receipts -- or up to me if i get a chance to see it again. it doesn't seem like it should be that easy for a movie to toe that kind of a line -- and maybe because it does, that is a testament to its inferiority to certain other of Spielberg's films. but its worth checking out.

An (un)Open(ed) Letter...

the idea that other people have interesting things to say and can get people to read them has finally gotten to me, so i decided to start this.

a few things to start off with, so we can both get our bearings here:

-- as much as i am fascinated by the idea of a potential readership, this blog is also exercise for me. i want to write, and that naturally means i want to be read. but i've found it difficult to be read if i haven't written anything...long form writing for me ends up in what movie people like to refer to as "development hell;" that is to say, it never gets past the idea stage. this is a good way to practice short form writing, articles and essays and such. i have an abundance of thoughts and opinions, which i am hoping the pressure of updates and the constriction of brevity will help me squeeze out into written form. practice might not make me perfect, but it will get me read. eventually.

-- i take the e.e. cummings approach to capitalization.

-- i haven't really decided what the theme of this blog should be, aside from its primary purpose of encouraging me to write, and i'm ok with that. i don't want it to simply be an online diary though, either. that would be boring to the point of depressing. for the both of us. at any rate, expect various words organized into various sentances and paragraphs about various topics.

-- and lastly...


yes, i'm fully aware that no one is reading this.

...all the height beneath me...

One summer I went on a vacation to New York City with my family. I have photos that I took at the top of one of the World Trade towers. On the very top story there was a ledge between where the floor ended and the window began. You could look directly down the side of the building. I had an old camera and took a few shots of the rooftops, the peaks of church spires, and the canyons of city streets between them. It felt strange and beautiful, to look down on something from such an odd perspective. It made the city look like a work of nature, and incomprehensible. My camera jammed after two or three shots, and then, a few months later, came 9/11.
I remembered there was a Sbarros up on that top floor, and all I could think about were the people who died for doing nothing but making meatball subs, and all the tourists on the roof who just wanted a good look at the city, and how the photos that were still in my camera had captured something no one would ever see again.
I go up to the roof of my apartment building now, and I wonder: what’s here now that I can see that no one will ever see again? I can see the dorms at buff state, the green copper towers of the psych center. I can see all the treetops and all the sky; the sun in the day and the moon at night. The sight sticks in my mind, all the strange beauty one can only see with height and I wonder will all of this fall too? and will the view that has jammed in the camera of my mind never be attained by anyone again? I keep revisiting the roof, thinking: How can I preserve this? How can I save these things that I love?