Slowly, But Surely, I Can Sit a Little Longer

How am I doing?

You would think having a medically mandated week off would be a good thing.  Nope, I felt really bored.  At first I thought Dr. L at Pan Am had a screw loose. The pain didn’t go away.  It actually got worse before it died down. Turns out the good doctor knew this will take time.

I go back on Tuesday.  I sit a little longer with little discomfort.  I also want to get back into running again, but this rehab will take a time.  I will walk the Air Force Run and the Headingley 5K.  The 5 K starts from a fire hall.  It means firefighters.  I will crawl if I have to for this event.

Let’s clear up a few things…

Those Pesky Hawkeye Rumours

It turns out a number of people went ‘mmmmm…’ at the recast rumour.  Further investigation from the site turned up it’s fan run.  The person running the site set it up on May 14th before putting out the rumour on May 15th.  One other interesting tidbit from comicbookmovie.com:

Journalistic Ethics and Standards on the Internet:

Your fansite is formatted to be a news site. OK, so you’re not a REAL journalist. Neither are we. We’re passionate fans first! Still, that doesn’t mean we don’t want to do our best to follow established guidelines and ethical practices. So, here they are:

1. Don’t plagiarize. Stealing is bad. When aggregating news content from other sites, only take a portion of someone elses work–a paragraph or two is acceptable. If you find you are taking too much you might just want to rewrite it and call it your own.
2. Always credit your source. Make sure when you use content from another site or news source that you give them credit with a link back to their site. Your newsloading tool has that ability, so use it.
3. Don’t use copyrighted images. There is a lot that is free on the web, but some of it is not. Sometimes stuff you shouldn’t take will tell you that it is copyrighted. If we are contacted by the copyright holder we will need to remove it.
4. Exclusive content is GREAT! Do a lot of that. It will get your fansite noticed. REMINDER: Fake “rumor” articles will get you banned!

I have to remind myself it’s an American site, but the urge to put a ‘u’ in ‘rumor’ feels as great as the pull of Loki’s sceptre.

The whole rumour turned out turned out false as expected.  Who managed to debunk it? In a head-shaking turn of events it’s the internet’s version of Walter Winchell (or should that be Hedda Hopper?).  Ladies and gentleman it fell to:

Perez Hilton!

Mr. Hilton actually had sources.  Yes, plural.  His link to those ‘comments’ didn’t work, but this is Perez Hilton after all.  Right now I fear for civilization if the person debunking rumours is one who perpetuates them in the first place.

Books, or Reading While Flat on My Back

I will have plenty of material for Book Talks.  It’s actually on my To-Do list for today.  In addition to Brene Brown and why we should all read her.  (Please don’t hold her Oprah channel appearance against her.)  I finished reading Frozen Heat by Richard Castle.  Chris Hedges now occupies my reading time.  for those unfamiliar with his work, one quote from The Hurt Locker should sound familiar:

“The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”

I have War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.   The book currently occupying my time is this one:

Image Credit: http://www.atomicbooks.com/

General Blah, Blah, Blah

It’s early evening and the rain falls steadily outside.  Not the most ideal start to the first long weekend of the year, but at least it’s not snowing.  I even took a walk in the weather to keep up the healing process.  While resting a back is important, moving it proves more so.  As the pain goes down-thank God-it’s time to do something about that core.  Therefore it’s off to do a little research on core area exercise.

Rumours, Innuendos, and Comic Book Sites

Whenever I berate myself about not publishing very much, I remind myself anything I do publish usually has truth behind it.  If I write about a movie, an actor, or anything else it’s fact checked.  If I make a mistake I own it, correct it, and move on.

As a self-confessed geek, I have to admit some of these movie sites/blogs drive me bonkers as they publish something, usually with a ‘source’, and suddenly a corner of the internet erupts with wildfire reaction.

I am looking at you Daily Super Hero.

Want to know how I know?  Tumblr just about exploded with the news Hawkeye might undergo the third recasting of a Marvel character in the nearly six years Marvel has built its cinematic universe.  Of course, goes studio reasoning, we recast Hulk and that worked.  We recast Rhodey and that worked too. Nobody will notice Renner anyway.

*Bing!* Wrong!

He got noticed alright.  Not bad for a compact guy in a universe of six footers.  Here’s another trait setting Jeremy Renner a part from let’s say Shia Lebeouf.  He spoke his mind about the Hawkeye he signed for and the one making it on the screen.  All he said was ‘At the end of the day, 90% of the movie, I’m not the character I signed on to play.’

When I read that back in August of last year, it answered the rather niggling feeling I had through The Avengers.  The action sequence with Hawkeye jumping off the building proved spectacular; I felt something lacked with Hawkeye.  Once I heard Joss’ commentary about scrapping a few plans for the character in earlier drafts, did I see his point.  It’s not Joss’ fault at all.  Director’s commentaries, Joss’ in particular, come in really handy.  The Thor/Iron Man sequence?  Marvel insisted on this match up  with Joss luckily insisting it will come in an organic way, not as some tacked on set piece.  (I finally clued into Michael Bay after Con Air and his wham bang disguised as a story.)  While we can argue that issue ad infinitum, it’s a sideline to a rather troubling issue.

Comic Book Movie’s The Daily Superhero prefaced their article with RUMOR in all caps.  They also have one Hollywood source whispering all sorts of things about the role getting recast.  All because of that one comment.  Let’s have a look at it shall we?

To work in Libraries, you need to have an eye for detail.  My eye fell on the ‘source’ at the bottom, namely Total Film, a somewhat decent movie site.  Did they have a fuller article about Hawkeye’s place in Phase 2?  Nope.  Here’s what the writer of this article pulled:

• “For 90% of the movie, I’m not the character I signed on to play,” says Renner, before homing in on the decision to have Hawkeye brainwashed by Loki from the get-go. “It’s kind of a vacancy. [He's] not even a bad guy, because there’s not really a consciousness to him.”

• “To take away who that character is and just have him be this robot, essentially, and have him be this minion for evil that Loki uses… I was limited, you know what I mean? I was a terminator in a way. Fun stunts. But is there any sort of emotional content or thought process? No.”

• “Is [Hawkeye] working for SHIELD or not?” muses Renner. “There’s a lot of unanswered questions, even for me.”

Pull the three quotes together and we have one unhappy actor.  Or do we?  Always look at the medium delivering the message.  One thing I noticed about sites like this one, they will pull anything off of any site without clicking away to get at the original.  The three quotes came from a Hero Complex interview on August 6th of last year.  The Daily Superhero article mentions the trend of Marvel recasting parts, or in the case of Hugo Weaving, perhaps dropping actors altogether.  (Even that last part is open for interpretation.  Weaving himself said, “I think the tendency, with those films, would be to probably not bring a villain back.  They might for The Avengers, but I didn’t think I’d be in Captain America 2 or 3.  I don’t think Red Skull will be there.  And it’s not something I would want to do again.  I’m glad I did it.” )
It’s almost as if the writer thinks A happened, B happened, and now I have C who else do I need to talk to look further into C?  Oh screw it! It happened before therefore it’s true.

Now let’s look at the quote in context, including the questions:

HC: Will we see you in a Hawkeye movie?

JR: I don’t know. I think there’s always possibilities of anything in the Marvel universe. There’s gotta be a want from people to see something like that. I don’t know if there is. Maybe there is maybe there isn’t. But who knows? We’ll see.

HC: In “Avengers,” you sort of get to play both sides. What was that like?

JR: At the end of the day, 90% of the movie, I’m not the character I signed on to play. I’m literally in there for two minutes, and then all of a sudden… All I could really work on was the physical part of it all, because that didn’t change. That was just the biggest challenge to overcome in playing the guy. Also, we’re pretty much introducing a new superhero character to everyone in a movie where there’s a thousand superheroes. So there’s not a lot of back story or understanding we can really tell about who Clint Barton is, or Hawkeye, and is he working for SHIELD or not. There’s a lot of unanswered questions, even for me. And I was OK with that. At least I was still in the movie. And I was glad for that. The closest thing I could really link to was Scarlett [Johansson's] character, Black Widow, because they have a history. And that definitely plays in the movie, I think. And obviously, you can’t go into too much just because there’s so much story to tell, but you definitely get a sense that they’re connected, and that there’s something really, really important that ties them together. And I could try to summarize it, but it can go a lot of places. That excites me, though, that there’s room for other things. (Emphasis mine.)

Oh, and one more for good measure:

HC: Are you disappointed?

JR: You know, there are a lot of people in that movie. And a lot of important characters. And my character, I felt like if I can help serve story, then I did my job.

Let’s say Marvel wants to recast Hawkeye.  Well, the reaction I see around the web pretty much says ‘no dice’.  The Avengers worked thanks the chemical mixture of actors breathing life into characters.  Plus a good script doesn’t hurt.  Regarding the ‘silence’ about Jeremy’s Renner’s involvement in phase 2 movies?  Boy seems kind of busy.  Movies are one thing.  New baby is quite another.  (That’s all I will say about that subject.)

Considering I just wrote over 1000 words on this topic (egads!) let’s leave with some wise words from the late George Carlin:

“Don’t just teach your children to read…
Teach them to question what they read.
Teach them to question everything.”

Now if we can only apply this sort of detail digging to political reporting.

 

Slowly, But Surely

A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us

–Pema Chodron, The Places that Scare You.

Monday, day 5 of this back injury, I decided to go for an extended walk.  Simply lying around does not heal bad back, moving the muscles help heal those same muscles.  However, after the 5 K, 53 minute walk, convinced I felt good that day, Tuesday brought the pay back.

Oh, lordy, it hurty.

My back had spasm upon spasm.  Luckily I had a muscle relaxant on hand, and took the day off.  I had physio on Wednesday with the my therapist cautioning me on taking too much too soon.  I just wanted to get back to normally as quickly as possible.  Most people would say ‘Oh, joy, a week off from work.”  Well, I feel bored, bored, bored, and let me insert a pop culture reference:

Today represents the first day I caught sit down for a period of time.  Between this and the dental surgery last year, I fear what my body can throw at me next.

The reason I went on my crazy 5 K walk was the Monday Learn to Run/5 K clinic.  I wanted to come out and see the guys.  Most people stay away from the Running Room while injured.  I needed to come out.  In short the motivator of the clinic needed to get motivated.

On that night, Fiona Odlum from CJOB told her story as part of the motivation.  She actually began her talk with something still with me.  Fiona said, “Your body will give out before your brain.”  I admit to crying in the waiting area at the physio office, luckily it’s one off to the side, and in the change room at Pam Am.  (That stupid sign made me laugh out loud.)  The pain brought tears, but the fear made them flow.  I worked hard for this life.  I know it doesn’t define me.  I want to take a deep breath for a little while before life hands me the next part of the journey.  I changed careers, worked in many places all at once, moved to a new place, and carved out a new life.  I want to enjoy my present.

While I did cry a little, I wiped the tears to focus on rehab. I know this hurts, whispers Eve Encourager, but we have to do this to get better just breathe. Luckily, I found myself a good physiotherapist, nicknamed S, who I will stick with after all I get well.  She recommended this el cheapo way to do muscle release:

To get rid of the troublesome spot on my left side, S recommended taking a tennis ball and rolling it against the spot.  It may feel like probing a bruise, but it helps loosen the tightness up.  The tight spot on my left side put pressure on sciatic nerve in the first place.

The other part of the treatment plan, other than rest, involves some walking for 10-15 minutes.  Well, my back tells me times up for this bit of sitting. Back to rehab.  Tomorrow it’s physio again plus a massage therapy appointment at the same place.  Can you say ‘huzzah!’

A Week Off I Didn’t Want

Dixie cups filled with water for an instant back massager

I ignored the sign three weeks ago. After a chiropractic adjustment, despite feeling better from a back spasm in January, I noticed a twinge in my lower back.  I likened it to post work out muscle soreness.

On Thursday the gradual pain turned into immobility. After calling work,  I grabbed some sweat pants and a shirt to go to the Pan Am clinic.  Within the space of two hours,  x-rays confirmed my spine looks fine.  The full diagnosis:

Lumbar Musculo-ligamentous Sprain

Wait! There’s More!

According to my referral,  it comes with pyriformis related spasm,  and sciatica.  No matter how’s it’s phrased,  the pain brought tears to my eyes. The only reprieve came from a sign making me both laugh and cringe. Just outside X-ray, I slowly changed back into my clothes,  and noticed this sign:

Please tell the technician if you’re your (sic) pregnant.

I had to look at the sign twice to wrap my head around it. I think the would-be grammarian suffered a concussion. Either that or just dim in this age of texting. I nearly burst out laughing reading the ‘correction’.

At the present moment I have a doctor-mandated week off.  Let the wall climbing begin. I limit my sitting and tap out this post with my tablet.  In between heat, ice, and physio exercises I make my way through Mad Men on Netflix. Currently, it’s 1965 otherwise known as season 4.

Midweek Geekiness: Iron Man 3 Edition

English: Logo of Marvel Comics (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I saw Iron Man 3 on opening night in IMAX 3D.  I decided that week after seeing a bunch of clips. The warming weather also means popcorn movie time.  I admit to not reading the comic books, but familiarized myself with the source material through Wikipedia.  It takes time and effort to be a comic book nerd, and this geek has her limits.  After hearing about the Mandarin and the Extremis story line, it’s safe to say to make a movie like this, with Marvel’s blessing, one needs to learn the rules to break them.

The purists will hate it.

I applaud it.

While it did have some uneven plot elements, Iron Man 3 focused my attention on the characters rather than  plot and/or visual effects.  Nobody goes through something like the ‘Battle of New York’ and not have their psyche turned upside down.  Our resident billionaire-playboy-philanthropist has seen a lot, and works on the believing part of what he saw.  Tony’s sleepless nights and Iron drones symbolizes a man denying what just happened to him.  What happens when glib one liners don’t cut it any more?

You talk about to someone.

The movie opens in 1999 as Tony meets Maya Hansen (played by The Town’s Rebecca Hall) and Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce).  A voice over sets up the movie.  Meanwhile I sat in my seat wondering Why the voice over?  Who is Tony talking to?  (That, my friends, is why one must sit through Marvel’s end credits to find out.)  Fast forward to post-Avengers Tony and we see a man escaping into his suit, as he experiences a panic attack at the mere mention of ‘New York.’

I confess to watching the movie already figuring out the plot.  While I did say some things felt uneven, the film threw out a few twists.  You can read more spoilery-laden blogs to find out, but it does reinforce for me the idea comics have to undergo the same considerations in adaptation as books.  To literally transpose a comic to film, to satisfy those purists, leaves out the context  originally forming characters and story lines for given issues.  Parts of the Extremis story line exists as does The Mandarin’s villainy.  When the Mandarin fought Iron Man in the comics during the 60′s, China remained a mystery.  Now the shroud has lifted slightly to show an economic superpower; One that likes to go to the movies just as much as we do.

Yeah, The Mandarin in its original incarnation would not fly.

Bringing us to Ben Kingsley…

Memo to those huffing about an actor of his calibre getting involved in a comic book film–get your nose down from the air and chill out.  I loved Gandhi.  I also enjoyed Sexy Beast.  I have seen the guy in good movies and not-so-good-to-bad movies.  Sir Ben was good in this one.  Unfortunately to go into details would give away some key points, and it’s not my style.  I can say the voice he uses in trailers has a purpose, and that’s all.

Would I recommend this film?  Yes.  It’s summer.  I put my money down to get away from life for a little while.  I put on my IMAX 3D glasses, and find myself peering at a world through Tony Stark’s eyes.  It’s actually fun since Robert Downey, Jr pretty much not only made the movie, but kick-started the Marvel movie universe as we know it.  As Phase 2 begins, I only hope the studio doesn’t lose track of what made these films good in the first place.  They attracted top-notch talent.  I will pay for my ticket if they don’t skimp on the talent.  Visual effects are fine, but without characters and a story it’s a body without a soul.

Related articles

• ‘Iron Man 3′ Comic Book References, Easter Eggs & Trivia (screenrant.com)
• End of a Cultural Era: Superhero Movies Part Two – Iron Man 3 and the Avengers 2 (redringsofredemption.wordpress.com)

Book Talk: Reading 50 Shades of Grey

Vintage Romance Novels (Photo credit: Stewf)

I admit to reading my share of sexy novels.  In grade 6 or 7, my best friend has a mom with boxes of Harlequin romance novels. My friend let me take one home to read.   I forget the title only it was about an English woman somehow caught up with a group of gypsies.  It was the first novel I learned the real name was Romany people.   As a curious tween it also introduced me to an explicit description of sexual intercourse, and the term ‘he nuzzled her neck’.  I didn’t know what neck nuzzling was exactly, but it sounded like fun.

Fast forward to 2013 and I have concluded a few women have some kind of  ‘porn stash’, or as I call it ‘a collection of smutty books’.  Instead of walking into sketchy stores, we browse among the one place such an open secret can exist:  the book store.  The bookstore no longer has the monopoly on the smutty book.  Thanks to e-books, readers can enjoy their guilty pleasures without the covers shouting:

Hey!  Reading Smutty Book!  Make Your Judgments Here!

50 Shades of Grey took people by surprise for a variety of reason other than its origins as  Twilight fan fiction or initial e-book publication.  Women clamoured for the book, wishing they had a Christian Grey in their lives, or else hoping for a renewed spark in the dying embers of a sex life.

After reading bits and pieces on Tumblr, I finally downloaded the novel and find myself 10% into the book.  I feel turned on alright; I feel turned on to laugh.  I don’t think the author had any intention of writing a comedic novel, but I find myself involuntarily snorting my way through it.  It’s starts with the repeated use of ‘damn’ and ‘crap’ within the first two chapters.  As much as I tried to quell the critical voice in my head, I really don’t like the narrator/main character.  Well, if you don’t like the book, why bother reading it? questions of the chorus.

On occasion one has to read a bad book to be a good writer.  As William Faulkner once said:

Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.
Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.

 

I don’t believe I am the only one reading 50 Shades of Grey as a ‘good’ book.  Somehow this book has beaten a lot of odds and I want to know why.  I also needed a good laugh now and then.  It breaks the cardinal rule in writing first person narration by using a mirror scene as a way to describe the character.  It’s also hard not read to read Christian Grey’s description without thinking of Robert Pattison.  An image squelching any spark, but I am over 40 and like my men talented and hot.  (The order is interchangeable.)

Will this fearless reader finish 50 Shades of Grey?  Will she do it and nearly die of laughter trying?  (I haven’t even hit the BDSM moments.)

Stay tuned…

The Real First Day of Spring

According to Environment Canada, the temperature is 13 degrees Celsius, with winds from the North at 13 km/h.  It sounds cold to those not used to it, but it’s heavenly under clear and sunny skies.

I had my supper and hauled out my stuff:

The lap desk didn’t work.  Right now one of my TV tables doubles as a writer’s desk.  Everywhere people cycled, walked,and ran, generally enjoying a day to finally shed a few layers.  The only compromise made to this weather is my beaten-up, long sleeve, red fleece.

I ran a few errands before getting a lift to my writer’s group.  I knew these people before with one new face among the bunch.  In the 90′s I had too much going on to establish anything.  Now with a little stability, and a lot of maturity, the desire to write met with see one member of the group at Chadwick Ginther;’s book launch for Thunder Road.

My writing was not the only thing to dust off.  At work I do something called ‘Link of the Day’.  Basically, I find articles and sites connected to the subjects the college teaches, plus libraries and technologies.  It’s a rotating job and my stint came to an end.  I enjoyed that task.  I have a system, and people responded well to my choices.  One link on bullying lead to one of my colleagues purchasing a book mentioned in the article for the library.

Now what, I thought.

Well, there’s your Twitter feed, suggested the inner voice Why not use it for something else other than publicizing your blog posts?

I met a writer named Graeme Brown (@GraemeBrownWpg) at C4 and he wanted my Twitter handle to follow me.  That, folks, got the ball rolling again. Considering I set up my Twitter account to follow Nathan Fillion in the first place, I would say things have evolved.

Bring me back to feeling stuck.  In fact I feel less stuck.  Now it’s time to pick a direction and keep going.  One direction already in my arsenal all along-the book talks.  Chadwick’s publisher, Ravenstone, called me a ‘Book Blogger’ and linked to my book talk on Thunder Road.  The math is simple on this one as I read and talk about what I’m reading; All of it equals book blogger.

Marianne Williamson wrote a piece often quoted by people, but now I finally get what she meant by it. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,  she wrote, Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
I don’t advocate the soulless self-esteem revolution students get nowadays.  From time to time, I lost and lost big.  I have flunked courses, wrote terrible works, and most of all mistook humility with personal put downs.  I learned to know it all by knowing nothing at all.  I learned to have confidence by not fearing mistakes. All of it takes work.  Every day I sit down to write and it feels like a strip tease.

Sometimes I hit it out of the park.

Sometimes it runs afoul.

At least I show up.