Poem of the Week

Genius

By Billy Collins

was what they called you in high school
if you tripped on a shoelace in the hall
and all your books went flying.

Or if you walked into an open locker door
you would be known as Einstein,
who imagined riding a streetcar into infinity.

Later, genius became someone
who could take a sliver of chalk and squire pi
a hundred places out beyond the decimal point,

or someone painting on his back on a scaffold,
or a man drawing a waterwheel in a margin,
or spinning out a little night music.

But earlier this week on a wooded path,
I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir
were the true geniuses,

the ones who had figured out how to fly,
how to be both beautiful and brutal,
and how to mate for life.

Twenty-four geniuses in all,
for I numbered them as Yeats had done,
deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface--

forty-eight if we count their still reflections,
or an even fifty if you want to toss in me
and the dog running up ahead,

who were smart enough to be out
that morning - she sniffing the ground,
me with my head up in the light morning breeze.

***

I don't really write poetry anymore, but back when I did I wanted to be Billy Collins. Of course I did. Everyone does.

There's something about the way Mr. Collins presents an everyday activity, like a leisurely walk, and imbues it with an almost sacred significance. The different uses of the term "genius" collide in an interesting fashion that calls into question the importance we sometimes place on our usual daily squabbles.

Oppa Braddy Style!

Maybe some of you haven't yet experienced the majesty of "Gangnam Style." If you belong to that crowd, I would recommend that you click here.

No, go back up there and click that link. Do it now.

There, don't you feel better?

"Gangnam Style" is a Korean pop song by a fella by the name of Psy. Thanks in large part to that rather goofy music video, it's currently the biggest thing on the internet (you know, until somebody posts a video of a hamster playing the harmonica or something). The song's been the number one download on iTunes, and... well, basically, it's everywhere.

And I've gotta say: Not only do I hope "Gangnam Style" is here to stay, but I hope we hear a lot more music like it. I'm pretty sure this K-pop marvel may be the best thing that's happened to popular music in the last several years.

I'll say it again, to prove that I'm serious. This:

is the best thing that's happened in contemporary pop music.

I listen to a lot of Top 40 radio while driving around the Salt Lake Valley and get REALLY SICK of all the samey-sounding "let's have sex in public while 'nnn-TISH nnn-TISH nnn-TISH' blasts through the speakers" garbage that's passed off as music these days, and even though "Gangnam Style" shares a lot of similarities with that kind of music, there's a lot to love here.

First of all, it's totally refreshing to have a hit song NOT in English. I've heard a statistic thrown around (a complete garbage statistic, I'm sure, but one that happens to line up with my own tastes) stating that 90% of everything is crap. The way I see it, if we limit ourselves to only that 10% of music that's good which is delivered in English, we're letting a lot of truly excellent music slip by us. So, by all means, pipe more of that K-pop through our radio tubes, Oh Great Musical Mens!

Obviously, "Gangnam Style" has a sense of humor. Whether you find that humor refreshing or horrifying probably depends on your tolerance for pelvic-thrusting, but I, for one, would like to see more lightheartedness in the pop world, which takes itself far too seriously for being the most frivolous and transitory of all musical stylings extant.

Even beyond that, though, there's a real sense of satire to what Psy's put together here - especially when the translated lyrics are coupled with the video. Here's an article that goes into things with a bit more depth than I intend to here. Suffice it to say, "Gangnam Style" has got a lot more substance to it than the goofy-as-fun video would imply.

So, yeah, "Gangnam Style." I want more, please!

Man, the Apocalypse Sucks

First all the flesh falls off my face like it was held on by spit and wishful thinking and now THIS!

I'm actually a little disappointed with the above picture - mainly because I got a little impatient with the brick work.

I DO think that's a fairly nice shadow back in that alley, though.

BONUS PIC:

Poem of the Week

mr youse needn't be so spry

By E.E. Cummings

mr youse needn't be so spry
concernin questions arty

each has his tastes but as for i
i likes a certain party

gimme the he-man's solid bliss
youse ideas I'll match youse

a pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues

***

E.E. Cummings is a long-time favorite. His poetry influenced me more than any other single factor when I decided what career path (or "lack of career" path) I chose to pursue. His wordplay, though sometimes seemingly nonsensical, is always deliberate, thoughtful, and meaningful. I've spent many long hours analyzing his writing.

Of course, some poems are little more than a screen behind which to hide a fancy rhyme and a filthy joke.

World's Worst Lyrics: Call Me Maybe

The Culprit

The Offending Lyric

I threw a wish in the well,
Don't ask me, I'll never tell
I looked to you as it fell,
And now you're in my way


Why is it bad?

That's why.

...And Boy Are My Legs Tired!

I've been making a lot of changes this year, many of which are happening RIGHT NOW. I'm in the process of moving, and I've decided to take a bit of a break from theatrical performance (more on that last bit later). I woke up early this morning in my brand new apartment, and decided it was time to enact one more change.

So I went jogging for the first time in, like, ten years.

Now, I've not completely neglected my physical fitness over the years. I can think of several instances when I've sat in front of the television, lifting a five-pound dumbbell with one hand while packing my mouth full of doughnuts with the other. I thought I'd be able to handle the exertion and marginal discomfort of a brisk morning jog.

I was wrong.

I live pretty close to a church house, so I decided to try a few laps around the grounds. I jogged five laps, walked two, shampoo, rinse, etc. By the end of the first five laps, I felt a slight tingling sensation in my windpipe. The tingling was just a shadow of what was to come.

After ten laps, my body screamed obsceneties at me. I felt as though all the air I had gulped in refused to leave my body but instead secluded itself in a corner in my head where it swelled until my brain threatened to collapse in on itself. My mouth filled with the taste of my own lungs.

My legs and knees shook violently, and I felt a little like how the apostle Peter must have felt trying to walk on water; however, instead of calling out to the Lord to save me, I begged him to let me die.

It's amazing how physical exercise sharpens your sense of perception. I took notice - more than usual, at least - of the gulls flying above my head and the gangbangers walking down the street at a far more sensible pace than I had adopted. Most keenly I remember passing a puddle shaped like a woman's head. She wore her hair in a conservative bun, much like one of the early Utah covered wagon pioneers. Her lips pouted out, as if to say, "Aw, are your feet getting sore from your little walky-poo? Well, at least you HAVE shoes. See, when I was walkin' across the entire country so I could give birth to your great grandfather in a dirt hole, I had to EAT my shoes!"

The puddles were very vociferous this morning.

I guess you could say it was an encouraging start to a potential new exercise regimen. I'm already looking forward to my next workout tomorrow morning. I'll just need to stop at Krispy Kreme on my way home from work tonight.

The Healing Power of Pop

It's been something of an emotional weekend - I've been moving out of the Avenues and into an apartment on the other side of town. I find I'm going to miss my old digs and the neighbors I used to have. So, while packing, I stuck in one of my old Pushing Daisies DVDs... and proceeded to bawl my eyes out let a single tear slide sexily down my cheek.

I've long thought that entertainment should do more than provide escapism. Sure, I mean, psychologically it does some good for people to, as a wise man once said, "forget about life for a while." Still, I've thought that people who sought entertainment solely for the escape are doing themselves a disservice.

I don't think I understood quite how I expected movies, books, TV shows, and the like to help, though, until just recently. Surprisingly enough, I made kind of an off-hand comment (dare I say a complaint?) a bit ago about how much I was bugged by the musical The Drowsy Chaperone which actually sums up what I now believe entertainment can and should do for a body:

[You] have plays like The Drowsy Chaperone, which affirms that the purpose of musical theater is only to temporarily distract audiences from their problems, rather than enable them to confront those problems.

I've done a pretty decent job of suppressing a lot of emotions. I don't really like to tip my hand that much on what I'm feeling, even to myself. For some reason, watching the saccharine goodness of Pushing Daisies helped me to face what I was feeling.

I've encountered this phenomenon previously, but I feel a bit better equipped now to make my point known: Good entertainment can provide healing by exposing emotions a person may be experiencing but not know how to express. Positive emotions can be felt more deeply, while negative ones can be expressed appropriately and then exorcised.

"The power of pie compels you!"

So I say yet again - mindless entertainment should be more than just mindless entertainment. It should be restorative.

Poem of the Week

Hedgehog

By Paul Muldoon

The snail moves like a
Hovercraft, held up by a
Rubber cushion of itself,
Sharing its secret

With the hedgehog. The hedgehog
Shares its secret with no one.
We say, Hedgehog, come out
Of yourself and we will love you.

We mean no harm. We want
Only to listen to what
You have to say. We want
Your answers to our questions.

The hedgehog gives nothing
Away, keeping itself to itself.
We wonder what a hedgehog
Has to hide, why it so distrusts.

We forget the god
under this crown of thorns.
We forget that never again
will a god trust in the world.

***

I don't think you have to be Christian to grasp the effectiveness of Christian imagery - although I'm sure the impact is more profound if you are. Paul Muldoon equates nature with godliness, both forces that mankind has historically betrayed. He equates the "otherness" of natural forces to a divinity that we long to comprehend but have cut ourselves off from understanding. Impressive stuff.

And, on a completely unrelated note:

The Knowledge Monster

Sometimes the urge just hits me: I want to learn everything about everything. Just... just everything.

I think this is why, every couple of years, I seem to pick up a new hobby that is suddenly the most important thing in my life.

Right now I'm jonesing severely to sate my curiosity on a number of subjects:

I imagine this goes along with the cooking thing, but I REALLY want to learn more about spices. Not just pepper and garlic, but the real exotic stuff. Turmeric, cardamom, anise, and... umm... melange. All of it. There's something terribly romantic about spices, and I want to understand 'em all better.

I wanna build a website. For myself. It'd be just like my blog, only better and with more... I dunno... bells and stuff. Eventually, I have a goal to create a webcomig (it's why I'm doing all the drawing). I'd want to run that on my own, though, without a platform like Blogger. So that's a project.

Dude, chocolate? It's cool. Like, really cool. I wanna know more about chocolate. This curiosity's two-pronged: I want to know more about the history, but I also want to learn how to work with chocolate more, a desire that, again, stems from all the cooking I've been doing recently.

Some of my favorite artists do a lot of work with shadows and shading - something I personally don't present well on page. I would really love to take a class just on shading and lighting.

Back when I was in university, I worked on a newspaper archiving project. I spent hours transcribing scans of early Utah newspapers. I frequently came across advertisements for "snake oil" cures - lot's of "Dr. Peabody's Cure-all Tonics." For some reason, the subject has stuck in my mind since then, and now I find myself consumed with curiosity to learn more about the slick malpracticioners who hawked the stuff from their wagons.

So what's itching in your grey matter these days?

Sad Little Skull Boy 2: Electric Boogaloo

When I draw, I just have trouble with perspective.

BONUS PIC:

Persona and the Power of Love*

Can I do this? Can I blog about a video game? Can I talk fondly about a Japanese role-playing game without looking like a complete anti-social nerdbag?

...

...

...

I'ma do it anyway.

Back in my teenage years, I played a lot of Japanese fantasy role-playing games. I felt like revisiting the genre a few months ago, so I picked up Persona 3: FES off the Playstation Network. Persona 3 is the story of a student whose school turns into a massive dungeon at night full of monsters which he fights with the help of a robot and a bunch of different monsters that he collects and then summons by shooting himself in the head.

It is, without a doubt, the most Japanese thing I've ever seen.

Truthfully, I've been enjoying the heck out of this game - not so much for the gameplay as for the story. And, I guess, I'm not enjoying the main story as much as the side story. See, the monsters that you collect throughout the dungeon actually grow in power as you strengthen your relationships with the people you meet in your day-to-day life. That means that you are literally fighting evil with the power of friendship.

Did I mention this game was Japanese?

Every day, your character goes to school and has the option to interact with several different types of people, usually inspiring them to make some real positive changes in their own lives. A lot of these stories actually wind up being far more interesting than the main plot.

There aren't necessarily a lot of original stories here, per se, but there is a lot of emotion. I'm always surprised when a video game gets an emotional response from me, so I tend to dig it. My favorite stories from the game (so far) include:

• Kazushi, a track star whose nephew is suffering from a debilitating physical injury. The athlete makes a deal with his nephew - if Kaz wins at a regional tournament, the young boy will go in for physical therapy. When Kaz develops a knee injury of his own, he has to decide whether to honor his promise to his nephew or drop from the tournament to take care of his own health.

• Bunkichi and Mitsuko, an elderly couple whose son taught at the high school until he died in a car accident. The school moves to have the tree commemorating their son's death cut down to make way for a new expansion to the school. At first hurt by the decision, the couple decides to let the school expand without raising any complaints, as their son would want his students to have the best possible educational opportunities available to them.

• And then there's Mutatsu, an old monk who drove his wife and son away by putting his work ahead of them. Over the course of the game, the hero wears down his callous attitude and convinces him to ask his family for forgiveness and try to win them back.

Again, we're probably not going to win any Emmy's here, but the side stories in Persona 3 offer quite a bit of complexity to an otherwise straightforward "Them monsters - kill dead!" plot.

Of course, there are a few problems with some of these side stories.

• My fledgling feminism is slightly provoked that seemingly all of the female characters you encounter are really only made happier by however strong their romantic connection with the male lead is. So far, the emotional resolution to these plots is ALWAYS a fade-to-black PG scene in the girl's bedroom. And that's just... well, it's kinda ridiculous.

• Oh, man. Then there's this guy. TV Tanaka, a prominent shopping network personality (think Billy Mays, only creepier) tends to hang around malls at night, trying to talk underaged boys into modelling in their underwear.
  
  No, I'm not stretching anything. Within the context of the game, that's actually what happens. Guy's a creep!


• Of course, the biggest problem with the game MIGHT just be the fact that, after completing nearly 50% of the whole thing, my Playstation decided to wipe my save file, meaning I have to start all the way from the beginning if I want to find out how the rest of the stories play out.

And, truthfully, I'm considering it. I mean, it's an enormous time sink, and it'd probably be December before I actually finished the game ("MELLY CHRISTMAS! YOU HAVE COMPLETED A GREAT GAME. AND PROOVED THE JUSTICE OF OUR CULTURE. NOW GO AND REST OUR HEROES!"). Still, I find myself actually wanting to know what happens to these characters.

The writer in me sees something really important here. Well, obviously. Otherwise, the writer in me wouldn't have WRITTEN ABOUT IT!

I've been drawn in to the world of Persona 3 not because of the gameplay but because of the characters. I want to see them achieve their goals, and I want to see the struggles they go through. With NaNoWriMo looming on the horizon, I think it's time I gave some thought to side-characters and motivation. Even the most peripheral of characters deserves a bit of development.

It's kinda like how those high school drama teachers spend so much time trying to get all 100 members of the ensemble in the annual musical production to write a page-long biography of their character. Turns out that attention to detail really is important.

*Originally, I'd titled this post "Happy Friendship Time: Ultimate Persona Monster Fighter Okay!" I thought that'd be a little culturally insensitive.

Music Crawl - Kimbra

I imagine you've all heard this song already:

If you haven't, I recommend you give it another listen. And, when you do, start paying attention to this lady.

In case you get confused by genders, I circled the lady. I know it's difficult to tell the difference when everybody's naked.

That's Kimbra. I knew nothing about her other than she sang on this song. I did a bit of a music crawl through the YouTubes and now... I still know nothing about her.

Well, except that she dances with all the elan of Elaine Benes:

She sometimes sports some rather silly hair:

Oh, and her music's pretty stinkin' good:

I like music quite a bit, but I'm not particularly adept at discussing music in depth. I have no idea if Kimbra's music is "hip" or not, or if real music snobs out there are freaking out at me for recommending her.

Whatever. I like the stuff. You should too.