How to Humble Yourself in Just a Few Easy Steps!

Have too many things been going right for you in a consecutive stretch of time? Are you dreading with dire anticipation the uppance bound to come? Are you still hungover from your tenure at a highly exclusive private university and find you are still so naturally snobby that you can't help but think you need to get knocked down a peg or two?

If any or many of these apply to you, read on and see how yours truly, who had begun to fancy himself pretty good at this life thing in the past week or so, experienced several surprises, twists of fate, and ego checks that have left him so affected that he's found himself unable to find any useful or coherent way to tie these events together -- because really, how can one live without a telos? -- except to use this cheap and not-so-accurate device. Shall we?

1) Talk excessively about how excited you are about seeing a movie, adamantly refuse to see it on account of presuming it will frighten you, then get the courage to go see it with a friend...who quickly comments that it was no big deal.

Okay, I'm the king of oversimplifications here -- a pattern you'll notice repeating itself throughout this tenuously-coherent post -- but after anticipating for some time (and also after reading several summaries of the film's plot [and successfully seeking out an animated .gif of the monster itself {yup I'm that vain...and yup, I did it again}]), I finally saw Cloverfield.

And, of course, I brought Christi with me, since she's the resident fanatic of scary-type films, not to mention the least likely to mock me mercilessly if I got too frightened.

In the end, I thought the film had its share of Davie-no-likey moments (the sequence in the subway, for instance, was an unpleasant few minutes, to be sure), but it kept me on the edge of my seat throughout, even though I knew what was coming. Seemed to me like a real winner.

Until the film ended. And Christi and I started talking.

Firstly, I want to make it perfectly clear that my own opinion on the film was not swayed in any way by Christi's immediate post-film utterance ("Oh, thank God"). I stand by my assertion that it's a 75-minute edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that, for the most part, doesn't really let up in the excitement department.

The problem is, the film doesn't exactly hold up to scrupulous analysis. Like not at all. In fact, the more I think about it, the more hard-pressed I find myself to recommend it. At the end of the day, Cloverfield works best (and, in fact, may work only) as mindless entertainment experienced with as little prior knowledge as possible. Which, unfortunately, means that unless you're an obsessive J.J. Abrams fanboy, you're not likely to find yourself watching this over and over again when it comes out on DVD.

Which means, in a couple of ways, I had to eat my words on this one. Strike one.

2) Read through stacks of pleasure books that you have no business reading all while attempting at all costs to (unsuccessfully) avoid the professor for whom you still have work due.

Okay, so maybe you're not all in the same situation as I am, forced to submit papers late because your attempts to hastily construct worthwhile arguments failed the I-can-do-this-over-Christmas-break test. But when you've got these kinds of responsibilities on your head, you probably have no business buying a bunch of books that have no redeeming value to your education, no matter how awesome Vladimir Nabokov and Philip Roth may be.

Nonetheless, the call of the Barnes & Noble -- particularly one conveniently situated in the student center in which one is spending the hour before one's next class, which comprises the final four hours of what has already been, to this point a nine-hour-long day -- proved too strong to resist. Of course, I was driven partly by altruism: it was the only store in the area that carried the mass-market paperback edition of Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, the book Danielle's been wanting to read as of late. And when you're me, and you're buying a book from a bookstore, you simply can't resist leaving until you've acquired one for yourself.

Which is how Cormac McCarthy's The Road ended up on the list of fun books for me to read.

Now don't you give me that look! I know it was a former Oprah's Book Club pick, but it's a fucking Pulitzer Prize winner, for God's sake! Hell, if she can take three Faulkner books off the market of Books That Can Be Read By People Who Value Their Penises, I'm allowed a pass here and there too.

Which brings me to...

3) Refuse for weeks and weeks to buy a novel written by your former professor on account of it being in hardcover and thereby too expensive...then give in and buy it when you find it in the bargain bin.

Let me preface this by saying that I mean no disrespect to Sophie Gee. She's a great professor, I loved both of the classes of hers that I took while at Princeton (an opinion not swayed at all by the Pre-Pre-Pre-Pre-Party that took place one fateful November morning), and I'm sure she's a very talented writer of historical fiction. But unless a book is so unbelievably good that I can't wait for the paperback, or it's in the bargain section of the Barnes & Noble, I'll take a trade paperback, thank you.

Permission for a brief digression. Can we not agree on the unequivocal superiority of the trade paperback to all other forms of book? Hardcovers look pretty, sure, but it's awkward to have to deal with the jacket and still keep it pretty-looking. And the mass-market paperback is of shoddy construction, printed on shoddy paper, and just begs to be abused. Books demand respect. That's why I demand the trade paperback, and so should you.

So despite the fact that I refuse to buy the newest book by Chuck Palahniuk (the one contemporary author whose books I will pick up as soon as humanly possible) until it comes out in paperback, I was tempted when I saw Professor Gee's novel, The Scandal of the Season, in hardcover at my local B&N over winter break. It seemed fascinating (it's a historical fiction narrative that concerns the writing of the great Alexander Pope poem, "The Rape of the Lock"), but for $24.00, I simply couldn't. Professor Gee would have to wait until paperback for the miniscule residuals she'd make off my purchase of her book.

But then something strange happened. I was walking through the Barnes & Noble just a few weeks after first seeing the book, and I found it unceremoniously discarded to the bargain table. So naturally, I gave it another look. $6.98 seemed much more reasonable (and is, in truth, far cheaper than the average trade paperback), but, anal-retentive bibliophile that I am, I simply couldn't spend the money on a book whose jacket had been folded, torn, and bent in such unpleasant ways. Sorry, Professor Gee, but I just can't.

I had cast the book to the back of my mind when, on a recent trip to yet another Barnes & Noble (have you noticed I like books?), I found it again. In another bargain section. This time for three dollars and ninety-eight cents. This time, I took pause. Less than four dollars is a seriously good deal for a hardcover. Especially when my B&N member discount would bring the total to $3.58. All I needed to do was find one with a jacket in pristine condition, to my excessively exacting standards.

And goddamn it, I found one. So, of course, I ate my words (again) and bought the fucking book. For about three-and-a-half bucks.

Professor Gee will make almost no money off my purchase, sadly, but I get the sense that a Princeton professor is probably doing pretty okay on her salary. And would likely get more value out of knowing that a former student enjoyed her work. And, naturally, should I enjoy the book, I'll absolutely pass that along to her.

I really wish any narrative threads associated with this book ended here, but sadly it doesn't. Next on my unfortunate list...

4) Get hopelessly pwn3d when your girlfriend, who has never read "The Rape of the Lock," grossly mistakes its subject matter.

First of all, this is really not as bad as you think it's going to be. She didn't mistake that word. It was the L-word she got caught up on.

See, she didn't know it was a great satirical poem that not only criticizes the triviality of a family feud that stems from the unwelcome snipping of a lock of hair but also lampoons common poetical conventions of the time. Nor did she realize it was the source of the quote, made famous by its appearance on the Genus Edition box of Trivial Pursuit, "What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things." No, no. She had no idea.

So when she verbally assailed my purchase of The Scandal of the Season saying, "I had no idea you were so interested in shipping," I was understandably confused. It took me a minute or so to put the pieces of all of it together.

(You may want to take a minute, at this time, to try and figure it out yourself before I reveal it below.)

She had interpreted "lock" not as pieces of hair, or even as a security device constructed by, say, the Master company. No, she'd heard "lock" and thought of the kind of lock that appears in the Panama Canal. And, running with this thought, she presumed the poem must concern some robbery or misappropriation occurring on the Canal. Which, naturally, must mean the book and its source poem must concern shipping, and why the fuck would I give a shit about any of that?

First I laughed. Then I cried. Huge, wailing, baby tears. In fact, I still well up thinking about it.

So there you have it! Four foolproof ways to put yourself back in your place, if you find you've been overstepping your bounds a bit.

Of course, if you find the humiliation to be too overwhelming, you can at least take solace in the fact that, even through all this, sometimes things do go right. Even if those good things have been unexpectedly delayed by about three months. And you know that can only mean one thing...

Time to go listen to the new Volta!

On 1-18-08, 2-3-08, and All Points in Between

I had originally planned to open this post with a brief (and probably uninteresting) digression about how, whenever I delay posting for any short but appreciable length of time -- say, a few days -- I inevitably end up with far more to write about than I originally intended and, as a result, end up not with focused posts but melanges of casual observations and recent anecdotes.

Then, as I tried to think up my (usually unsuccessfully) witty title, I realized that I'd ended said title with a preposition. Which reminds me of perhaps one of the funniest exchanges ever shared by another person. Let's go back there, shall we?

The time is Summer 2007. Ruben Pope, my illustrious former roommate, is spending the summer in Princeton working at A Little Taste of Cuba, his beloved cigar shop, and doing undisclosed research at the Firestone Library. During one such trip, he approaches a gentleman working there and asks about the location of a book that's he's seeking, saying to the gentleman, "Where's this book at?"

The gentleman, clearly either miffed, smarmy, or generally displeased with his lot in life, looks disdainfully at Ruben and replies, "You know, if you go to Princeton, you should know that it's improper to end your sentences with a preposition."

At which point the ever-industrious Mr. Pope, thinking with a quickness as yet unseen in his collegiate academic pursuits, considers the comment for a moment and replies, "Where's this book at...

[beat]

"...Fucker?"

And...scene.

And this is why, despite all I may say when confronted with unfiltered, uncensored memories, I do miss the company of Ruben Pope.

Moving on.

So, if you spend any time at all in the online realm, you're familiar with a little movie called Cloverfield. Several people on a message board I frequent have been following this film since the first then-untitled trailer was screened before Transformers back in July. For the past six months, the film has been hyped not in traditional media outlets but through a viral marketing campaign that has built an exhaustive back story on teh Intarwebs.

Now that everyone's up to speed, it's time to start wondering (rightly so) why I would care. After all, one look at the trailer or the official website would make it perfectly clear that this is A MONSTER MOVIE. Which probably also means it's A SCARY MOVIE. And Dave does neither of these things.

Okay, maybe that's not entirely true. But as a certifiably ginormous pussy, neither of these are really in my field of typical immersion. The last time I indulged myself in a monster film was the abhorrent 1998 Godzilla, and the scariest thing about that flick was Matthew Broderick's misguided belief that it would reinvigorate his movie career. As for horror, I was able to sit (willingly, in fact) through both Saw and Saw II, the former because of the influence of online marketing and the latter because I, like so many other fans, thought it might actually be similar to the first one and not become merely an exercise in how gorily one could depict various demises. (As you may have noticed, I do not include Saw III or Saw IV in this list -- guess I was wrong about that please-be-more-than-just-torture-porn thing.) And over the years, a few flicks that some might consider horror films (the works of M. Night Shyamalan, for instance) have also ranked among my favorites.

But the fact is that I avoid horror films because I'm afraid of getting scared. It all stems back to fourth grade when I, the curious but naïve soul that I was, decided to watch the ABC miniseries The Langoliers, based on a Stephen King novella. At the time, I thought I was being really brave by watching something that I figured would scare me, but I was intrigued and wondered how bad it could possibly be. Then, without ever having seen the end of either of the two parts, I learned very quickly the first lesson of proper evil-creature horror films: withholding the sight of the monsters as long as possible makes the film scarier because the viewer's imagination has to fill in, and they'll picture something far more frightening than anything you could put on screen.

Son of a bitch, were they right.

I spent roughly the next two weeks having trouble sleeping, constantly checking under my bed and behind the closet doors for any semblance of what I figured were ghastly, horrific, demonic creatures. (After all, they moved lightning-quick and devoured you whole...gotta get them before they get you, right?) It wasn't until years later, watching the miniseries rerun on the Sci-Fi Channel, that I actually saw the Langoliers and put my nightmarish imagination to rest. Granted, if I'd known at nine years old that what I was fearing was essentially a flying meatball with a Mickey Mouse-shaped mouth and teeth that rotated around said mouth like a chainsaw -- all of which was rendered in typically cheesy circa-1994 television special effects -- it probably would have still fueled my nightmares. But seeing it so far down the line was mostly laughable.

Yet the damage was done, and I'd branded myself a horror-film sissy. So why did my fascination with horror continue? And why did I, even after insisting that I wanted nothing to do with it, even consider seeing Cloverfield? Better yet, why do I still do? Even reading through online spoilers (including an exhaustive and ultimately successful search for an image of the monster), I still want to actually experience this film. For reasons that boggle my mind, especially as I read through the reviews.

See, I thought the online marketing angle was pretty nifty, but from the start I was skeptical of a few things -- most potently, I wondered how a barely-90-minute film, consisting almost exclusively of "found footage" taken by the people on the ground at the moment of the attack, could manage to include the elaborate back story constructed online. What I've learned is...it doesn't. There's no reasoning or explanation to be had in the film, and this frustrates me for a number of reasons, but for one especially strong one above all.

I wrote a seminar paper last semester on Coheed and Cambria, and how the unfolding of the story across multiple media could contribute to new literacies and engage new potentialities in storytelling. That description may seem like a bullshit pose to explain away writing a paper on a rock band, but I do truly believe in the potentialities that are being examined by the band. And when you see a marketing campaign like the one behind Cloverfield, you can't help but think that this is a game-changing, market-breaking new wave in storytelling.

But it's not. It's not because the Coheed and Cambria story relies on multiple media in order to tell its complete story. Cloverfield, on the other hand, limits its story to what appears on the screen, with the marketing behind it being only a mythology. It's not so important where the monster came from or why it's attacking New York or what will happen after the credits roll -- that's not the story. The story is about the people and what appears on the tape. To me, that's cheating the diligent thinker out of the time invested in the story developing in the online world, a story that seems far more interesting and in-depth than a simple oh-no-it's-coming-run-for-your-lives monster flick. This seemed like a brilliant opportunity for moviemaking to move beyond the silver screen, but instead it's only innovative in a technical sense. Why does the film itself have to separate itself so distinctly from the truly fascinating storytelling it was engaging in through the alternate media? Why couldn't it have played into what we learned online, instead of being so limited and so liminal?

Granted, I still haven't seen Cloverfield. And I'm still debating whether or not I want to. But what I see happening here is that the film will create a desire only for plot revelations and images of the monster. And once those two are satiated, I doubt many people will share my enthusiasm for wanting to immerse themselves in this experience, an experience that may be new but is far from being truly groundbreaking.

I sigh, heartily.

But then I remember that the New York Giants have, somehow, against all odds, made their way into Super Bowl XLII. And I think about Eli Manning and how desperately he must be looking for redemption after the Giants' incredible Week 17 performance. I think about how sick and tired I am (and most of the people I know are) of New England (read: Boston) succeeding in pretty much every sport. I think about how due that pompous fuck Tom Brady is for a fall, and about how everyone is already predicting that the Patriots will coast to victory, and how no one will suspect the Giants to be able to do much of anything in two weeks.

And I think about how utterly dangerous that makes the Giants. And how primed it makes them to be the ones to take down the Patriot machine.

And I think it's going to be a hell of a game, and a long two weeks waiting for it to be played.

I Never Said WHEN They'd Follow...

The new year has already dealt me a rather important but familiar lesson: no matter how much we claim that new years represent new starts -- as evidenced by our absurd societal dependence on resolutions to manufacture change (mostly unsuccessfully, I should add) -- some things simply don't change because we turn the calendar. Case in point: my inability to punctually maintain this blog, which took a hit near the end of last semester and, as we can clearly see, hasn't improved much in 2008.

Fortunately for me, there's eleven-and-a-half months to go, so all hope is not lost.

But continuing the trend of having a perfectly reasonable excuse for my abandonment of my trusty escritorial friend, and perhaps even amplifying it, I have a number of good excuses this time! For one thing, the rush of getting back to school with minimal hiccups was enough to keep me occupied for the last few days of my precious but restless winter break. True, it's mostly my own fault, what with the not-getting-my-papers-done-before-their-original-due-dates and what not, but working damn-near-full time hours at the hospital -- which necessitated waking up at 6:15am five days a week, something I haven't done since high school -- didn't help.

Nor did the scheduling of multiple appointments with multiple doctors in the scant four weeks I was home. I saw four doctors -- an allergist, a cardiologist, a dentist, and an endocrinologist -- while I was in New Jersey, most of which gave me a relatively clean bill of health or, at the very least, told me things I didn't already suspect (such as, for instance, the shocking revelation that I'm allergic to dogs and cats; D's bid for a fuzzy companion in the future took a staggering blow at the news). But the endocrinologist required of me a significant gamut of lab work and other such tests, including one test that easily ranks among the most awkward medical-related endeavors I've ever had to venture upon.

Okay, full disclosure. The test I'm about describe wasn't the most awkward of the tests I needed to do this time around, but there's no way I'm describing that particular honor in a public blog, so we settle for the runner up.

To those who are uninitiated, a 24-hour urine collection test is not especially fun, particularly when you have to do it while at work. It basically entails carrying a big jug around with you for 24 hours and making sure that everything you pee ends up in that jug before returning it to the laboratory. Which is especially difficult when you're at work during said 24 hour time period.

Now, I know what you're thinking and you're actually close to right: I work at a hospital, and my life's a fairly open book anyway, so it shouldn't be that big a deal, particularly since I'm surrounded by people who are used to that kind of thing. All fair points. But in my own defense, picture this, if you will: would you want to be carrying a jug of your own piss around the office all day? Yeah, me neither. I don't really care much that anyone knows I need to do it, I just don't think I need to make a public spectacle of my piss jug.

So I did what any mildly-unbalanced young man would do in this situation: I held it. All day. Oh sweet merciful mother did that last hour suck.

Except for that brief bout of borderline bladder bursting, the rest of the test went off without a hitch, except of course for the part where I had to, you know, pee in a jug. It could be that the preservative in the bottle was what made it worse, because the risk of splashing (and subsequent burning OWOWOWOWOW) necessitated peeing into a separate vessel and then pouring those contents slowly into the jug. And since I simply could not rationalize using any vessel in my house that might have, might ever, or might have thought about, even if in a past life, containing food or drink, it meant first filling a specimen cup. You know, those tiny little ones. That don't hold much. Yeah, those.

Can you see why this was awkward as hell?

Fortunately, that's now in the past, something I can just as thankfully apply to the event referred to in my previous post. Charles hit the nail right on the head: having succeeded at the Blazin' Challenge in the Blacksburg Buffalo Wild Wings scarcely a year ago, but failing to redeem the t-shirts that I justly deserved, I felt the need to take on the challenge again -- at the recently-opened location at nearby Palisades Center -- and truly earn my threads.

That, and I had indulged my competitive streak and challenged first Caitlin then John to take me on. Sometimes my natural douchiness has truly regrettable consequences.

But since I've spent a large portion of this post already describing in more-than-casually-acceptable detail scatalogical processes, I'll spare the goriness this time. Except to just say OH GOD THE BURNING WHY OH WHY DID I FUCKING DO THAT OWOWOWOWOWOW.

Which, painfully and awkwardly, brings me back to State College, where the first week of classes has gone off relatively without a hitch. My ENGL 015 class is at a far less ungodly hour this semester (10:10am, as opposed to the abysmal 8:00am of the fall) and my students have already shown me a great deal of personality and enthusiasm, which I pray doesn't peter out in the coming weeks. My seminars are also quite wonderful, if not particularly focused: Chaucer, Modernism, and Alfred Hitchcock are my topics of inquiry, and all are winners thus far. And they're even more enjoyable since the work load is pretty fairly distributed throughout. Methinks this may be the semester I really get a handle on this grad school thing.

And if I can get that straightened out, maybe I'll be able to get this whole regular-updating thing down too!

...

Yeah. Don't get your hopes up.

------------------------

Next Time: Dave the Sissy addresses the phenomenon of the intriguing-but-too-scary-for-me-to-see-without-risking-weeks-of-nightmares film Cloverfield and wonders why entertainment can't live up to the intrigue and complication of its marketing campaigns, in what may end up being a thinly-veiled attempt at reconciling the thesis of his sci-fi paper with something other than just Coheed and Cambria. Stay tuned!

I'm Back, and I'm Blazin'™

A new year, a new start, and a new escapade that has set my ass afire.

Details to follow...