March 2007

Hi. My name is Mike (Hi, Mike). I’m Angry. I’ve always had a temper for as long as I can remember. It generally doesn’t extend to people, I can be infinitely patient with other people. Situations and machinery set me off. Today, it was the dishwasher. Several months ago our old dishwasher, after slowly grinding down, doing a worse and worse job, finally called it quits. After a short round handwashing dishes Carleen’s parents helped us out to get a new dishwasher. Today, after I pulled dirty dish after dirty dish out, I simply lost it - cups, silverware, you name it, got tossed and banged around. This of course was not an isolated incident.

Mostly, I get angry at work. Again, a few months ago Maintanence replaced some belts on the machine I work on. The old belts were causing some of our forms to be damaged and marked up. The machine hasn’t run correctly since. After a few months of dealing with this, my patience has finally worn thin. I dread going in to work, which I have never previously done.

Compounded with that, is our house, which is in a constant state of disrepair, while all I seem to have time to handle is doing dishes/laundry and steaming bottles for Carleen. The chores pile up and we both feel over-burdened by all of it. Our dogs, meanwhile, have been completely neglected while we fuss over Liam, so Chani pees on the already significantly stained carpet, while Turbo continues walking on Carleen’s feet - Carleen casts no shadow anymore, Turbo has taken it’s place. I’ve never been more frustrated in being a dog owner in my life. Financial worries loom overhead, since in the near future I’ll be quitting work to take over as Mr. Mom full-time, an occasion which I am both eagerly awaiting and dreading all at once. Add to that my Crohn’s is flairing up now - probably in response to all the stress, which is piling on even more stress, in a lovely little vicious cycle. So I’m finding it difficult to eat what I want, which just upsets me more.

I’m checking some books and videos out from the Library to see if that helps, if not I plan on seeing a psychologist. It’s frustrating to have outside forces so easily push your buttons - I hate the feeling of not being in control of my own emotions. It’s not something I want to teach my children.

We’ve added some pictures to our Flickr album. Liam is starting to pose and smile more for the camera (I think he’s finally getting the idea). We haven’t added our Flickr album to our blog since the update but will eventually. For now just go here.

While both myself and Carleen walked out of 300 feeling satisfied, the lens through which we viewed the movie was very different. Her biggest “complaint” was that 300 was heavy on “war glorification”. I think she’s a bit shy of bullseye on this one. While certainly the movie was battle-scene heavy, I don’t think the point was that “War is Good”. I think to do any kind of movie centered around the Spartan culture is to do a movie about one war or another. That’s who they are. Their culture was a warrior culture. Their women didn’t send the men off with “Come back safely!”. They handed the men a shield and said “With it or on it”. In other words, come back victorious, or dead. To say that 300 was about the glorification of war is like saying Braveheart is about the glorification of the kilt. It’s simply a part of their culture, they trained to be fighters starting at the ripe age of 7. Having a trade was looked down upon. They were soldiers first and foremost.

One thing that has irked me about peoples criticism of this movie from the very beginning is how they are criticising it assuming that it is trying to be a historical documentary. No. It is a movie, based on a comic book Graphic Novel. Which is in turn based on a historical document well over 2000 years old. Filtered through that much time and that many different types of media, it would surprise me greatly if there were no “creative licences” taken with the factual account of what really happened. It’s a story, about a race of people that were incredible military strategists. It’s a story about a bad-ass King who sacrificed himself and his men for his country. Now, isn’t that worth relaxing your historical sphincters? Really, what story of war, or some fancy-pants General hasn’t been greatly over-exaggerated. Let’s face it, Custer didn’t have a “Last Stand”, if that man’s drawers came out clean, then I’m the Queen of England. We all know this, but you know when it comes down to it, we still like to believe that these men faced insurmountable odds and looked fine doing it.

Besides, there were so many other more powerful themes in 300 that I felt over-shadowed the theme of war: brotherhood, family, courage, perseverance and self-sacrifice. Some pretty powerful stuff.

Discussing all this with Carleen this morning, she mentioned the desire to see more of the Spartan culture, more “daily life” scenes, especially focusing on women in general. I have to say, for the most part, I agree with her on this, since Spartan women enjoyed a hefty amount of power unheard of at that time. However, the premise and focus of the movie (and I’m assuming the Graphic Novel), was on the Battle of Thermopylea. This wasn’t a movie detailing daily life of the Spartan people - it was solely about “…how few, stood against many”, to quote good King Leonidas.

Technically, the movie absolutely shined. They used CGI the way CGI is meant to be used - they BASF’ed it, i.e. they didn’t use CGI to make the movie, they used CGI to make the movie better. The battle sequences *sigh* were filmed in delicious slow motion. I get so tired of the “camera man on speed and too many espresso’s” look that is popular with so many battle scenes. Everything in this movie is slow (yup I mean a good slow), sharp and gorgeous. The soundtrack fit perfectly, so much so that after buying it I couldn’t remember a single piece of music that I heard. A clear sign that the soundtrack meshed with the film rather than dominating it.

Overall, I would say this: if you have Braveheart and/or Gladiator in your DVD rack, 300 belongs there as well.

Bare with me while I do something I don’t do much of…critique a movie.

Last Friday, Mike and I dropped Liam off at his grandparents and went to watch The 300. This is something we don’t do much of either. The 300 is the film adaption of Frank Miller’s graphic novel and is based loosely on the ancient Greek Spartan and Persian battle known as Battle of Thermopylae. Since opening Friday night, it has already been recieving a lot of criticism for its start to finish graphic battle scenes and its rather unseemly depiction of ancient Persians. The Iranians are especially pissed off about the latter (like we need another reason to piss off the Iranians right now) and Mitch sent me a rather snarky article written in the New York Times where the first sentence reads:

“300” is about as violent as “Apocalypto” and twice as stupid.

The rest of the critique is not much better (however, extremely hilarious to read). Personally, I feel The 300 is probably one of the most obnoxious examples of war glorification. The plot relies heavily on one historical element, the idea that the Spartans were few but were so courageous and so well trained that they could kick anybody’s ass. Big, small, mortal, imortal, spears, swords, bows, tusks, snouts, mutants, whatever, just align yourself in phalanx formation with spears pointing north and bring it the hell on.

I suppose the whole freedom fighter, hero, historical movie thing is getting a little old. I was actually an early fan of the genre. Don’t ask me how many times I’ve watched Braveheart because I’ve lost count (please don’t ask, I’ll feel like a dork). But epic movies like this tend to effect people differently during war times. It’s difficult not to find hidden messages and allegory around every corner. In fact, what movie production in the last six years has not had some patriotic bumper sticker or anti-war comment plugged into its script. It’s tiresome trying to digest a movie experience while also trying to filter out all the bullshit. It’s not that I don’t think contemporary movies should be saying something about the times, I do, very much so. I just find a lot of the mainstream stuff to be extremely repetative.

But all that put aside, the real strength of The 300 is in its visual appeal. And no, I’m not just talking about Gerard Butler’s pecks and his hunky chipendale-like side kicks. The cinematography was very cativating and very reminiscent of graphic novel art which I’ve always liked for its visual effect. And war glorification or not, the movie is very inspiring which I think, according to the ending, may have been the point in the first place, to tell the story of how the courage of the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae eventually (according to history) inspired their people to defend themselves against the Persians later. I don’t care how anti-war you are, you still walk out of the theater wanting a piece of the action.

I’ve been feeling especially Irish of late. I think it could have something to do with Bill lending me his Dropkick Murphy’s CD. Not a particularly good band, but still, it had bagpipes (yes, bagpipes are Scottish, but I’m not Scottish, so they made me feel Irish). Oh, I also watched Waking Ned Devine this past week - that could have something to do with it too. My Irish blood comes from my mom’s side, my dad’s side giving me English (Huxley) and Swedish (Anderson). I guess I’ve always related more with the Irish/Welsh part of me. Except when I’m picking on Carleen for being cold: “Bah! it’s that weak Norsky blood - you gotta have good thick Swedish blood in ya’”. I don’t know, I’ve always just liked everything about the Irish culture - the music (especially the music), the dancing, the land itself, the red-headed women. It makes me want to pick up a bodhran or a fiddle (yeah, I’ll get to that one day…), suck down a Guinesse…and…other stereotypical Irish things.

I’ve always been envious of Carleen for her strong national heritage - being 1/2 Norwegian. It’s strange, really. I should be spouting my strong American heritage, but I guess I don’t see it like that. It’s probably the fact that America is so young in comparison to most other countries, we always measure ourselves by where our forefathers emigrated from. So, while Carleen is, in all likelihood just as much of a “mutt” as I am, she stems from a much older country than I. This is really bizarre and backwards thinking for me, the more I think about it, but I just never felt like I was “Irish” enough to say, “I’m Irish”. And I always wanted to be able to say that. That, and have the accent.

So, this highschooler, nice guy, big reader, gamer, latch-key kid, library regular, came up to my desk yesterday and asked for a set of headphones. We have a little hello chat and in the process he tells me that he wants to listen to a new band that he just discovered called Nine Inch Nails. Now, if you grew up in my generation then you’d probably know that this kid is grossly misinformed. Nine Inch Nails has been around since I was in Junior High. I try to set him straight but he refuses to believe me saying “No, you don’t understand. This is a really hard metal kind of band. You must be thinking of someone else.” I guess he must think I sit around listening to Enya and Fleetwood Mac all day or something.

I really felt my age.