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It was as many feared when the news came that the airplane he owned had crashed: James Horner, one of the most acclaimed composers in film history, died last night.
Aliens. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Braveheart. Apollo 13. Titanic. Avatar. Glory. Field of Dreams...
And so much other work too. His score for Krull is a classic example of the Eighties-era fantasy genre. If I don't mention his music for The Rocketeer, somebody is going to jump flunky for it. Animation fans will remember that he scored An American Tail.
Since the first of his works that I can remember listening to was his score for the second Star Trek movie, here now is the complete composition for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Fittingly heroic and triumphant, in remembrance of a life just as much so.
When he came to visit in early April, my longtime friend/collaborator/partner in crime "Weird" Ed Woody gave me a birthday present. It was The Lord of the Rings, Extended Edition on Blu-ray. It's been sitting unopened on my shelf ever since, 'cuz I haven't really availed myself of its beauty (I hadn't actually watched any of it by that point but having seen the DVD version I could readily imagine how splendorous the Blu-ray would be).
Yesterday I finally cracked it open from the shrink wrap. I was working on the book and needed something for background noise. So I popped in Disc 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring. Every now and then I'd turn to look at the screen and be astounded at the beauty of the film, but mostly I was just listening to it for inspiration as I stared at MS Word open before me.
It wasn't long before the movie was at Bilbo's birthday party. I've always loved this scene ("I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve"). And then Bilbo slyly puts on the Ring and vanishes and forevermore becomes a Shire legend. Then we see him in his home, and Gandalf is asking him about "this ring of yours". Bilbo had intended to part with it, to bequeath it to Frodo. But he finds that he cannot abandon it. His eyes look at it lustfully in a way they never have before. He holds it greedily in his fingers, calling it his "precious", just as Gollum did so many decades earlier. We see that Bilbo is attached to the Ring. That he cannot make himself lose his grasp of it, no matter what it is costing him in terms of his spiritual health (his earlier comment about feeling like he's butter scraped over too much bread). It was like J.R.R. Tolkien was communicating something personally to me, through Peter Jackson's adaptation of his masterpiece.
Because I, too, have had the One Ring. I have had many such rings throughout the course of my life. And each one, I have held onto beyond any real sense. What can I say? It's one of my character flaws: I have a hard time letting go of things... and especially the past. And that is what they have collectively been: the One Ring in my possession, but really possessing me. Keeping me stalled. Holding me down. Seizing my mind and my spirit and to an extent my soul. Like Gollum and the Ring, I both love and hate these things. I am too enamored by them. But in the end, we see Bilbo do something that as Gandalf says in the book, is the only time in the Ring's long history that someone has done such a thing: Bilbo lets the Ring drop from the palm of his hand and onto the floor. He lets go of the Ring. He lets go of the thing that has held him in its grasp ever since he found it (or was found by it) in Gollum's cave. He surrenders his control of the Ring and in doing so, he forces the Ring to surrender its control over him. It hit me hard. It was Tolkien telling me that I have a ring of my own, and it is destroying me. I have my own One Ring and it is draining me. It is a bane, not a boon. It was Tolkien telling me that I must let go and let it fall to the ground and never think or speak of it again. That it is not worth being controlled by it. That like Bilbo, it was spreading me too thin, instead of enjoying life to its fullest.
I wish that it was as easy as having a physical ring to slip off of my palm and onto the floor of my living room, but it's not. In this, I ask for prayer that my resolve holds true, and that I not be tempted to pick up the ring ever again.
Bilbo lets go of the Ring. The next thing we see, his heart is merry and he goes off into the night, onto the road that will take him to distant Rivendell and his much-anticipated rest. He goes off to see the world, to see the mountains and the Elves and the Dwarves. He has lost the Ring, now the Ring has lost utterly.
I wish it were as simple as that. Bilbo was lucky, that the Ring was such a tangible item. I wish that I could be like Bilbo.
I wish that I was a Hobbit. To have a life of peace, only setting off on an adventure if one felt like it (though it will be thought of as queer by the neighbors). A life full of cheer and contentment. A life with friendships that won't be lost. As well as all that beer and pipeweed, but I digress...
Hobbits don't have to worry about the things that we do. And manic-depression probably doesn't exist among them. That alone, makes me envy them. One can learn a lot from Hobbits. And I think, in this case, I learned a lot.
Why is it that too many Christians are bitter, hateful, resentful and generally mean to others… and especially other Christians?
People shouldn’t be like that anyway, to each other. But for those of us who are in Christ, our behavior is far more dire. We aren’t supposed to be like the world. It’s supposed to be different, among us. We are meant to be a radiant, shining witness for Christ in this fallen world.
Instead, I see so very often, there is ignorance and un-forgiveness and bitterness toward one another.
How is that being a follower of God, who has called us to be lamps unto His majesty?
A lot of things precipitated me thinking about this. I guess, my mind was led to contemplate it.
I have no answers.
We’re supposed to be better than this. This world isn’t our real home, but that doesn’t mean we have to behave in a manner reflecting how broken it is while we are here.
That’s something else I wonder about: why do some Christians harbor these kinds of feelings toward one another, when we are going to be sharing the same place one day?
O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand?
Turn and answer me, O Lord my God! Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die.
Game studio Bethesda unloaded the big guns last night at their first-ever E3 presentation. Since its announcement months ago the hype had been stoked about Fallout 4. Then two weeks ago Bethesda lifted the cover on that mega-anticipated title with this toad-strangling doozie of a trailer. So what else could Bethesda bring before us at this point?
By the time Bethesda execs got to Fallout 4 last night the keynote was being watched by at least a million viewers over gaming broadcast site Twitch and probably just as many on Twitter. After going over some other games (including the new Doom, due next spring) it was time to enter the Vault. Because war... war never changes.
Okay so, Fallout 4 is getting released this coming November 10! It's available for pre-order now.
And look! If you wanna spend $119 for the Collector's Edition you get a real-working Pip-boy!
From the "Don't Really Need But Are Lusting For Badly" files. Wearable and functional. Usable with your iPhone or just about any other smartphone on the market today. Interactive with your game via an app.
A whole lotta cosplayers are swabbing up drool looking at that thing this morning.
I'm not ashamed to admit that Fallout 3 devoured about 120-140 hours of my life. That wasn't a game. That was a life-impacting experience on par with a Star Wars movie or having tickets to the Super Bowl. With Fallout 4, I'm expecting no less.
The greatest president of the past half-century - at least - and he kept a sidearm during his time in the Oval Office.
I don't care what your political persuasion, you gotta admit: that is severely hardcore.
The New York Daily News has an eye-opening story revealing something that until now only members of the Secret Service were aware of: that Ronald Reagan not only believed in the Second Amendment, he actively practiced it. Specifically, he had a .38 pistol nearby as a personal firearm during his time as President of the United States. He especially hid it in a briefcase as he traveled on Air Force One.
The article by Brad Meltzer goes into detail about what other presidents have carried with them. George H.W. Bush toted his driver's license around, and Clinton had a photo of Hillary and Chelsea (no comment). Obama carries a Blackberry but no wallet and no money which is why he's sometimes asked to borrow some (again, no comment).
But no one among the occupants of the White House during the past thirty years or so has done it as bad-a$$ as Reagan did.
Anyhoo, it's a very neat article if you're at all interested in presidential history. Kinda makes you wonder what else is still out there waiting to be discovered.
Worth noting that we are currently in the midst of the eighth-hundred anniversary of Magna Carta: the founding document of English law and a cornerstone of liberty for many nations down through the ages. Including the United States.
"Sign HERE, Johnny-boy."
Ahhh yes: John, King of England. A monarch so disastrously bad that not once since and never again has England put a king named "John" on the throne. He spent years wrecking havoc on the country he was supposed to be leading (sort-of like the past three or four presidential administrations here), wasting money and manpower and countless lives on wars in France and such.
Finally, enough was enough. A bunch of the barons of England decided that the time had come to lay the smack down on King John. So they showed up in force, arrayed in their armor and finest weaponry and, ahem... "invited" John to come down to a meadow at Runnymede near Windsor. Because they had a list of demands and if he knew what was good for him, he was going to read it and sign it.
The document which would come to be called Magna Carta ("Great Charter" in Latin, because of its large size compared to other documents of the era) curtailed the powers of the king so as to assert the rights of the barons, delineated individual rights such as jury trial and fair justice, and laid down the groundwork for what would become parliamentary law.
John looked around at all of those armored barons and their retainers and quickly arrived at the conclusion that Runnymede was not the place to get all uppity. With all the barons witnessing, he signed the Magna Carta on June 10th, 1215. A few days later on June 15th the barons pledged fealty, which is kind of a way of saying that the Magna Carta was officially ratified.
It was all well and good, but pretty soon neither party really upheld their terms of the agreement. Magna Carta went for awhile annulled by the pope, but after a bit of a civil war and the coming to the throne of Henry III it became the consensus of most that the treaty was a pretty good idea after all. From that point on, it's remained one of the basic elements of English law. And consequently, a progenitor of the Declaration of Independence in the United States.
So, happy birthday to Magna Carta! Looking not too shabby for something eight centuries old.
Well, this section of the book is now finished. The first draft of Chapter 25 was completed a short while ago. It follows the one that had stumped me since February, up until a week and a half or so ago. The one that took me so long to crack and I couldn't have done it without a dear friend being here to give support and encouragement.
So the complete draft of Chapter 24 was done, but 25, well... I could see the shape of it, the general form, but the particulars were eluding me. So I thought "maybe I should write the next chapter while waiting for 25 to really present itself". And that's what I did. So there was 24, followed by 26, with 25 in between still to be written.
This past hour, Chapter 25 was done. I wound up waking up for some vague reason, and decided for the heck of it that I'd see if I could write anything.
And I did. But man, that was tough.
Chapters 24 through 26 are somewhat a "triptych", in that they are a block of chapters complementing each other, and if this book gets published you'll see how that is. This was THE hardest little part of the book to get through, but now it's done. This was the end of Part 3 of the book, and apart from editing and polishing up it is more or less completed.
(Still a lot of work to do so far as editing goes, but I'm not really worried about that.)
Now comes the next section, which will be a collection of essays about bipolar disorder, and a lot of those have already been written. Some as early as last summer. There is at least one chapter which is darkly hilarious and had two friends cracking up laughing when they read it. I don't mind that at all: you have to be able to laugh if you have a condition like this.
So that part is the next to be tackled. And then the final section. Which, I think will go much easier than the just-finished one was.
Who knows? It's possible that this book might be finished by the end of June. If so, it will have only taken 13 months to complete it. Seems like a long time. But be kind: this is my first time writing a book after all :-)
A journey that began in late 2001, finally ended a few minutes ago.
Tomorrow my DirecTV account ends (I'm relocating soon) so this week
I've been watching all the stuff on my DVR that I hadn't seen yet.
Among those were the last three Harry Potter movies.
Since
yesterday afternoon I've been watching, as time allowed for it, Part 1
and Part 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I just finished it.
And watching Harry stand there, with Ron and Hermione and Ginny, it hit
me hard: these were the final moments of something that began what
seemed like a lifetime ago, for me personally.
I saw Harry Potter
and the Sorceror's Stone on the day it came out, on November 16th 2001.
It was a cold, dreary and raining day. My girlfriend had come to
Asheville for the weekend. The next day we were going to a wedding. We
saw the movie in a theater not far from my apartment, and we really
enjoyed ourselves.
She had no idea that a few feet from where she was sleeping, was a diamond ring.
That was the day I saw the first Harry Potter movie. And whenever a new Harry Potter movie came out, I saw it on its opening day.
Except for the past number of years. I hadn't been able to bring myself to watch the films that
came after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I didn't know if
I could do it.
Order of the Phoenix was the last Harry Potter movie I saw during what was one of the happiest periods of my life. I suppose, I just didn't have the heart to want to watch any more after that.
But here I am, this morning. Thirteen and a half years later, this cinematic journey has drawn to a close for me.
Thirteen and a half years ago, I was working at a Best Buy. Until
everything in the economy took a hit along with those two towers. I had
just begun writing the script for my first movie, with no idea how I
was going to make it. The bipolar disorder had yet to erupt with all
its fury (I still struggled with depression, but nowhere as bad as it
would eventually get).
Most of all, I was in love with someone who I was going to spend the rest of my life serving.
I saw the first Harry Potter movie on the afternoon of November 16th in
2001. I watched the ending of the last Harry Potter movie on the morning of June 12th,
2015.
So much that happened in that little dash between those two dates.
Did you see what I did there? Huh, did you? That's all I got...
Well anyway, a recidivist robber is cooling his heels in a jail in Fairfax, Virginia after stealing 300 cards from the insanely popular game Magic: The Gathering in the possession of a self-described "nerd". Said nerd, one Kemper Pogue, proceeded to formulate and execute an elaborate trap toward recovering his cards. Which, incidentally, were worth $8000.
(Are these Magic fans dedicated to their hobby, or what?)
After filing a police report, Pogue decided to do what a
Magic character like Garruk Relentless might do, and hunted down his
enemies with dogged ferocity — sans the battle axe.
He
started by posting a detailed message on Facebook to alert friends in
the Magic community about the theft. Then, he began calling stores in
Northern Virginia and Maryland that specialize in selling Magic trading
cards.
Unless the thieves were big fans of the game as well, Pogue
figured he knew something that the perpetrators didn’t: Despite its
rapidly growing ranks, the Magic community is not only fanatical and
obsessive, it’s also a tight-knit, nerds-only clubhouse, where
information about players and cards circulates quickly via regional
shops, tournaments and online forums on Reddit and elsewhere.
“There
aren’t many physical things that can be taken that has this much sense
of community attached to them,” Pogue said. “Cards have all these
memories and conversations with them from people you’ve met all over the
country. When Magic players hear that a collection has been stolen,
it’s heartbreaking and they rally around each other to get it back.”
The story shares how Pogue and his friends trapped two thieves in the store after working with local law enforcement to crack the case. It's a wild story and well worth your time to check it out.
I've never played Magic: The Gathering. But I do know a lot of players who congregate at HyperMind and actively play, trade, all that good stuff. It is definitely a close-knit community of players around the world and I can't help but cheer stories like this.
And it goes without saying: way to go nerds!!
(Also thanks to friend of this blog Roxanne Martin for spotting this story.)
The other week I was up late working on the book. It was frustrating me to no end. So I turned on the television, allegedly for background noise thinking maybe it would inspire me. And it did, but not the way that I imagined. Because for some reason I wound up on a local station that was less than a minute into something called The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club.
It was a movie. And from the first moments, it captivated me like few films I've seen of late have.
Directed by Justin Barber, The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club is the tale of young waitress Megan (played by Stacey Bradshaw) and her career at a small restaurant. Simple enough. Except that every Wednesday morning Megan's routine runs afoul of three senior citizens who arrive for breakfast and hold court. They practically come in and take over the place. Which never fails to rub Megan and fellow waitress Martha (Amanda Barber, who also wrote the script) the wrong way (though restaurant owner Virgil seems to take perverse pleasure in the elders' antics). No matter what Megan and Martha do, the three men always find something to gripe and complain about, and it's getting on the two ladies' nerves to no end.
But then one day Megan has an idea: instead of her and Martha merely tolerating the three, why not go out of their way to be nice to the three men? Meaning such little things as having their usual breakfasts prepared for them when they arrive. And taking some time to talk to them as being more than merely customers.
What transpires is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Megan and the Wednesday morning breakfast club. One that finds Megan and the three gentlemen seeing each other in a new light, and has Megan especially coming to appreciate her new pals for their experiences and the cheerful natures that have been hiding behind a fading facade of grumpiness.
The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club is an outright delightful gem of filmmaking: one that packs a lot of humor, heartbreak and life lessons in its 50 minutes running time... and if there's any complaint about this film it's that I wish it had run longer, so captivated was I by these characters. Justin and Amanda Barber have filled their story with some terrific casting bringing to life nothing short of perfectly nuanced and even slightly quirky characters. Stacey Bradshaw plays a frustrated-turned-bold Megan with tremendous talent, and with this film under her belt she definitely deserve to go far. There is some gorgeous cinematography at work in this film, with each shot given a loving amount of care and attention. It is, by every measure, a movie well done.
But for me personally, the most fun about The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club is the weekly trio who congregate at the restaurant. Werner Reidel, Hans Willer and David Maysick are a hoot to behold as Heinrich, Nathan and Ricky. The three are concentrated curmudgeon-ness and gripe. But as Megan works her way toward them the griping falls away beautifully for each of them, and through Megan's eyes we come to see Heinrich, Nathan and Ricky anew... as well as appreciate them and those who they stand for.
Here's the trailer for The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club:
I loved this movie on so many levels. I suppose one of those is that my own father was much like one of the Wednesday morning breakfast club. Every morning he would leave the house at 5 a.m. for breakfast at a nearby cafe, where he would eat and spent two hours with the other regulars. That was his routine. Dad's been gone for a little over six months now and I still miss him doing that. So The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club resonated with me. It made me realize how thankful I was for the time I got to spend with Dad, especially after Mom passed away. I think this movie is going to resonate with a lot of other people like that.
I didn't work anymore on my book that night, but I came away feeling that it was time well spent. And you no doubt will too.
The Goonies, without a doubt one of the most defining movies of the Eighties generation, was released thirty years ago today on June 7th, 1985.
Here's Chunk doing the "Truffle Shuffle" in wild celebration!
Inquisitr.com has a neat list of 15 things about this movie that you may not have known. F'rinstance, the pirate ship was kept a secret from the cast until they were ready to film the scenes there, so as to more authentically capture their surprise.
