Compelled to write

-I'll be the first to admit that I'm disappointed in my blog output after a strong start, a lot of good writing exercises, and probably more links pages than I really needed to create. I guess airports are my muse then, because yet again I find myself blogging in the Salt Like City airport. Much has changed and life is vibrant, booming, but I feel a bit of stagnation that is now going to be shaking things up to a large degree. This post will be long but will probably border on aphorisms.

-I think that Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising" is the definitive artistic statement about 9/11. The more I think about it, the more I listen to it, the more I think it to be true. Although I'm certainly not qualified to make any kind of final decision in this arena clearly, I'd like to elaborate my thoughts. Listening to it in the airport, watching the people, I think that "The Rising" perfectly captures a post-9/11 America. Its pride is wounded and America somehow feels different, hollow. People are incapable of pretending it never happened and struggling to grasp the magnitude and the ramifications of such a history-changing event. Even in the most normal of everyday interactions, something has changed. It feels a bit like innocence lost when one is struck so catastrophically on their own soil. Illusions are quickly shattered. Although there are some good works on this, they don't capture the full spectrum of the effect on the American life. Bruce's album goes through the pain of the event, the sudden void in the New York skyline, and faces the challenges of trying to heal through such adversity. What it's like to get up the next day, to throw a party, to be happy and joyous again, etc. He tackles what its like to return to normal life again, something that I feel has scarcely been addressed.

However, there's one emotional note that is glaringly absent: anger. Nowhere does Bruce use this momentous occasion for a political soapbox, nowhere does he say it's time to "kick Osama bin Laden's ass", nowhere does he talk about the inevitable invasions. His album is one of healing and of the human cost, not the political ones. I like that, a lot. "Reign O'er Me," a decent, flawed movie with a great heart that resorts to melodrama and extreme post-traumatic stress syndrome in one man to show the effect of 9/11 in the families of those who died in the towers. The movie never really clicked with me, not at all despite having Don Cheadle who is consistently excellent. Although I haven't seen "World Trade Center", I have seen "United 93", which focused entirely on the facts of the attackers, the defense network, and those aboard United 93, which crashed to the ground in Pennsylvania. "United 93" was a movie with no frills, no elaborate soundtrack, and no special effects. It was humanity at its finest and its worst. It struggled to explain why people who had never met each other were willing to die and kill many around them for something as intangible as a difference in ideas. It perfectly portrayed the senselessness of the violence, both of the hijackers and the men who stood up to them and crashed the aircraft to save others. The last thirty minutes of that movie made me sob my eyes out as I watched the senseless violence, people make their last calls to their family ("Honey I need you to know the code to the safe. This is where our will is...", teary-eyed "I love you's", and so much more.) I've never lost it in a movie like that. But its an incomplete picture of the event and it stops with the crash.

-"The Hulk" - 2008 version with Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt - Huge disappointment. The word for this movie was stiff. It was so far the antithesis of its predecessor that it made overdeveloped relationships into trite and insincere ones. William Hurt was wildly underutilized, as was the rest of this talented cast. It was an action movie that Marvel lacked confidence in so it blew its load in the trailers by showing the Iron Man bit at the end, all of the good fight scenes (essentially all of them period) in the trailers, and featured a character that no one really believes worked that much better than the previous incarnation. However, it was safe to a t and marvel really didn't want a mega-failure, so it made a mediocre movie with an all-star cast. Still, that irked me.

-I'm staffed in Nashville for the foreseeable future. I'm really torn on this. There are a number of pros. I'm getting a lot of great PD, insane amounts of client contact, and a completely new case experience out of this. In addition, there's a great team of people I genuinely like, I'm going to rack up frequent flyer points and Starwood points like nobody's business. But, that said, I'm trading the Southern California sun for Southern humidity. The greatest summer in the states for Tennessee. I mean I know it won't be all bad and I'll be in California Thursday-Sunday, but man that's a lot of traveling to be doing. Not so stoked on that.

-In general, existentially, things are going really well. I'm hitting my stride nicely (it helps to not have worked much the last month or so - hooray for beach time) in a number of ways. I'm using the trip to Montana to get back into reading (I'm going to have read a book a month by the end of the year, or else. Next year, let's double it). I'm also going to the gym much more regularly and starting to cutting down on the shit I eat. Nashville won't be THAT conducive and I'll be working hard, but that's a great test. Will I have the resolve to do mini work-outs and control what I eat? Let's see. But in general it's for me to behave more like the man I want to be and less like a college student. I need to develop a healthy routine and do it now. Otherwise I'll end up stubborn and immobile like my Grandfather. I'm really fearing seeing him tomorrow morning as a shadow of his former self. As far as my shit, I'm working on it. I'm going to hit my New Years Resolutions (1 down already: good first performance review-perhaps the most important) even if it means only really working towards most of them in the second half of the year.

-Sacrilege abounds, but I'm thinking of getting cheap Clippers season tickets to watch Baron next year.

-I can just as easily see the Lakers becoming the Buffalo Bills the next few years by being perennially close without winning as I can see them becoming a dynasty. I really really hope they don't mess up their core and win it all next year. I think we're poised to. It all really hinges on the knees of one man-child: Andrew Bynum. I said I'd do a season wrap-up, but man I don't want to.

-...does it make sense to get Clippers season tickets when, honestly, I already have UCLA football and basketball tickets. Do I have time for that with work? Leaning towards no.

-On my flight to Montana tonight, I almost relived the horror that was my last trip. They canceled a shitload of flights to Salt Lake (mine survived) and then they oversold the flight to Bozeman and were calling people randomly to cut them out. Insane! I had flashbacks to my last disaster but I was lucky enough to avoid the random cut. They were sending people to Billings (2+ hours away) but at 930 TOMORROW night. I would have said fuck that, you send me back to LA tomorrow morning, reimburse me for my flights and give me a voucher. I don't want to lose 36 hours of a 72 hour trip again.

-I really want to see this Gonzo movie, badly. I'm going if I have to go myself. Love me the good Doctor.

-My dad always told me, "There's friends and there's money." It's always uncomfortable to mix the two when there's that added relationship.

-Still not sold on anyone in this election. Obama is trying to lose my vote it seems and McCain isn't doing much to win it. I may not vote.

-NBA free agency has been CRAZY. Seriously.

-One of the most upsetting tidbits about traveling for work was the toll it'd take on my GTA IV progress.

-I wonder...

-I seriously hope that people stop buying Budweiser. I hate all their beers and what they did to Rolling Rock anyway. It'd be great revenge.

-The next "X" years of your life always looking frightening and crazy in tunnel vision. Every time I'm faced with the prospect of years into the future, it freaks me out. Thinking about all the change necessary. But change is incremental and natural and one needs to embrace it. Seriously though, who wants to embrace age? It's a fundamentally scary prospect.