The Future From the Past

Corrie was watching an episode of Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz's show "Bones" the other day. Strong, no-crap-taking female lead character? Corrie's all over it. Anyway, in this particular episode of the cop-procedural, the murder victim was a short man with a Napoleonic complex. His son had started a fight with a girl who had martial arts training and lost. This father approached the girl and acted in a threatening manner, subsequently getting smacked down.

The "fight", between an adult man and a middle school girl, had been filmed by a friend of the girl and uploaded onto the show's YouTube facsimile. This episode aired at a time when you'd need a facsimile for YouTube, but now you probably wouldn't.

In the show, the investigators were able to trace the views from the footage as it traveled from the girls' little circle to a wider area, specifically a bar where the victim had last been seen alive. (The little girl had nothing to do with the murder of the guy.)

Anyway, here was a scene of "Internet fame" getting the best (or worst) of a person and humiliating them. How suave and "with-the-times!"

Then...

Getting dinner ready the other night, I flipped on our lone Simpson airing and was surprised to see a very old episode. It turned out to be "Homer's Night Out" from Season 1, airing on March 25th, 1990.

1990!

In it, Homer heads out with the fellas for a stag party and eventually gets photographed by Bart with his tiny spy-camera. Here's the picture:

Upon developing them, he shares it with Milhouse, who shares it with Wendell. Someone asks Bart why he didn't share the picture with them, and on it goes, until everyone at Springfield Elementary has a Xerox of the picture. At that point a father finds it, admonishes his kid, then giggles and it gets sent out to everyone at his job. Soon enough, Marge stumbles across it.

I remember thinking, Holy cow! They predicted Internet infamy! I love how they showed the process itself (no public Internet at the time) and the realistic ramifications: Marge is only really upset that Bart saw Homer treating a woman as an object, and forces him to take Bart to find this girl so he can be a man and apologize.

One topic lost in all of this is how many strip-clubs, gentlemen lounges, and cabarets exist in Springfield, but whatever...

Remember: this was in 1990.

Also, this was the first episode with a special guest star, the first-ever Simpsons guest star: Sam McMurray, who voiced the lounge singer near the end.

Time Travel Shenanigans in Two Independent Films

I'm usually the first to poo-poo time travel in movies. Two films I've watched this past weekend while Corrie has been out of town had mostly novel ideas about "time travel" as it were.

The second was made known to me during a conversation with Tony as he was visiting with Corrie and the fam in OKC. It's called "Time Lapse." In it, a trio find a camera that produces Polaroids of the next day. It sounds kinda silly, but the film is executed pretty well. Like Tony said, it was worth a watch.

Two of the trio are a couple, and the third is the scummy "best friend" of the guy in the couple. The boyfriend is a painter who, as you watch, you realize you care very little about, as he's an ineffectual bozo who must've been amazing to land the girl he has. The [SPOILER] revolation of the affair between the girl and the sleazy roommate comes as no shock, as I called it out loud to my television alone in the dark within the first scene.

The first movie was the real reason I wanted to put a post up. It's a super low-budget film written by and starring Shane Carruth, an actor and college graduate who's degree is in math (MATH in the house!). The movie is called "Primer."

It became well known in movie circles because it cost the boys only $7,000. Also, Carruth and his fellow writer pals didn't dumb down the math or engineering tidbits. There are two main characters who, along with two other buddies, are all engineers with a firm and do entreprenurial work on the weekends in their garages.

In doing some research into reducing the mass of objects, they discover a strange film developing on the object they put into their field. It turns out it could only develop with sufficient time, and that meant that the object had existed for longer than it was possible.

A discussion of a time loop is had, and the mathematical gloves are never taken off. These guys don't mess around.

Eventually, the idea is planted to build boxes big enough to climb inside of. Here's how it works: you turn the machine on, and walk away. Leave the scene all day, staying out of sight. Later on, you come back to the box and get inside. After a few hours, you get out of the box, basically a few minutes after having turned it on, six or eight hours before you got in. Follow?

That makes it sound almost straightforward, but the reality in the film is as confusing as possible. Which is why the paradoxes are too hard to face. Here's a helpful poster the team put together to help explain the way it works:

"Primer" is a good watch, definitely worth its 74 minute running time, even if it'll take me multiple viewings to wrap my head around.

One theme was, as Shane Carruth has stated, that scientific innovation usually comes by accident, as you're working towards some other goal, and usually when it happens, it's in a garage or a basement. Carruth has also stated that it always bothered him in movies how "prototypes" of scientific dealys are made of chrome and have shiny lights and such. In this film, you see how the guys actually build the first prototype, and it looks like something two engineer buddies would make in their garage.

Congrats Jimmy and Christina!

It was last month, more than a calendar month at this point, but our good friends Jimmy and Christina took the plunge on April 3rd and made it official! (Enough cliches in that sentence?)

Yours truly was one of the eight groomsmen, as were Tony, Ryan, Sam, Erik, Steve, Ken and, checking in with a phonetic nickname, Guilly. Guilly was the one gentleman I didn't have any real fixed memories of, but I am certainly glad to have made his acquaintance---he's good people.

What can I say about Jimmy B getting married? That we're all excited this phase of their lives are beginning? Hell yes. That being asked to stand on a line for a close friend is an honor? Hell yes.

That maybe some of the stories from the weekend---and in general whenever our group of guys get together---should remain in our memories instead of being printed here? Maybe so...

Joe and Kelly came out from Denver, and that added to the awesome flavor of the weekend---we hadn't seem them for years, maybe, since their own wedding in 2011.

Tony has been the connector for me and Joe and Jimmy---a groomsman each time.

*The Unfortunate Incident of the Passat in the Nighttime*

On Saturday, the day before the wedding, there had been a large BBQ out at the refilled Laguna Lake after the rehearsal at a Catholic church up Highland. Only the bridal party needed to be at the church.

A park party BBQ is usually a good time, and there were definitely some beers being enjoyed. But this is Jimmy's party, so there was also plenty of Jameson being enjoyed. Afterward we did some stuff at Jimmy's house--wedding errands are an endless list of lists--and then headed back to town, first to Tony's hotel so he could change, then on to ours so we could change (SLO nights are still 30 degrees less than the days (at least)).

Corrie was driving my car, and after we'd made it to Tony's long pants. we were on Monterrey at the light at Santa Rosa. heading back to our hotel. The car momentarily felt like Corrie had stalled it, that little jitter that happens when you take your foot off the clutch when it's still in gear.

It reminded me of when Norm and I used to bump each other at lights back when we were in our own cars in high school. "Did that guy just hit us?" Corrie asked, "Or...did I stall? The car's still on..."

"Did that fucking guy just hit us?" I was seeing red.

Tony from the back seat, "Think so..."

Our light turned green and we pulled over into a bus stop area just past Santa Rosa. I kinda wanted the driver to take off so we could give chase, but Corrie was driving, and that would have been a colossally bad idea. I noticed the car behind, a newish white Benz pull over as well, and stepped out of the shotgun seat side as the car stopped rolling.

Not that anyone could hear, but I was stepping heavy to the back of the car. When I got there I looked down at the bumper: not a scratch. Not a mark, not a chip, not a dent---nothing. Okay. We could barely feel it inside, no marks here. This may yet prove entertaining.

That all ran through my head in a fraction of a second. I turned to the passenger side of the guys car as the driver stepped out, and I had my arms wide in a What the hell? gesture. The driver approached and I could see he was a young man, probably hadn't graduated yet from Poly.

Being around kids so much now has taught me how to use the I'm a grown-ass man card. "What the fuck is the matter with you!" I yelled at him as he got close. He was visibly rattled.

"Sorry man, my bad, dude, I'm sorry..." the words were coming from someplace inside his reptile brain.

"Were you on your phone?" My tone was a razor blade.

"Yey-auhh," he was incapable of lying.

"Not we both can see there's not a scratch on my car, which is good. But let me tell you what the situation is: my wife is driving my car because I spent all day at the park drinking whiskey and probably shouldn't be driving. My buddy, sitting in the back seat there, also spent the day drinking with me at the park. Now, we have more whiskey in the car--it was a gift. But we were also given really sharp stiletto switchblades, and they're also in the car. So...what do we want to do next?"

He seemed pretty shaken from the whole interaction, so I tried to engage him in conversation a little. Do you go to Poly? What do you study? Is this your parents car? I was curious about that. 

The back and forth ended with something like, "So, just be smart, okay? Stop using your phone while you drive. See, because I see you, young, driving a Mercedes, hitting people at stoplights while you're on your phone. You seem like kinda a douche."

"Yeah, yeah I am. Totally...my bad..." I think I might have chuckled when he agreed that he was a douche. At one point he said he was scared shitless, which made it all worth it.

I didn't threaten him, but I probably did menace him a little. I make it sound, in the retellings with the guys and the kids later, more confrontational that it really was. I asked more than those questions and we had a good talk for what it was worth.

***

This seemed like an easy anecdote for the weekend. I bailed pretty good while we were setting up at the vets hall. We danced for solid minutes. We loaded up the truck afterwards while still looking all James Bond, which was pretty sweet.

Some pictures:

These are from Corrie, and she has some other good ones, but I'm not sure where to find them,

Here we are, bump and all, which certainly led to "seeing red" more than the Jameson, of which my own partaking was limited.

Congratulations Jimmy and Christina! May the future be as full of adventure as you need it to be!