And so we punk

[Ed. note: The following was written for the NPR project Three Minute Fiction after research uncovered that the winner of this installment would receive publication in The Paris Review as well as being read on All Things Considered. Essentially an experiment in microfiction, the task was to create something that could be read in three minutes, about 600 words, on a topic of the guest judge's choosing. This time, a President, any, fictional or otherwise. After the cut is my offering, already submitted but with no real chance of consideration as it will undoubtedly fail the earnestness test that seems a prerequisite for an audience with NPR. It is also a borderline story, more akin to the non-fictions of Donald Barthelme. The piece is called "The President Takes a Sick Day. Enjoy.]

Experiments in Film Reductionism

It's a dirty secret that the most frequently visited posts on this blog are the ones that feature my thoughts on film: White Ribbon, Tree of Life, Drive. Which is sad, because I've realized that I'm not a very good film reviewer. Either those thoughts are slight, in passing, or just a one-off that essentially means nothing to anyone anywhere. As a nascent cinephile, I find this disheartening.

So I attempted to remedy this via exercise. The film: Trollhunter.

The clip:

The text:

When we’re first introduced to our hero – the character Hans and the troll hunter of the film’s title – he is unloading hunting supplies from the back of his SUV. As played by Otto Jespersen, he appears world-weary, serious. He brushes off the three film students’ attempt to interview him and, blandly picking up a hand-axe that seems vaguely medieval, closes the door to his dilapidated trailer. It isn’t until the students follow him to a remote forest – in the middle of a hunt, no less – that Hans opens up to them.

By all accounts, the 2010 Norwegian film Troll Hunter should not work. Centering on the trio and their attempted documentary on bear hunting, they end up on the trail of a mysterious poacher (Hans), only to discover it’s not bears he’s hunting. Shot in the vérité style of found footage from the students’ hard drives, the production stinks of the low budget trappings of The Blair Witch Project. What’s more, it is more interested in the crags and rocks of Norway’s fjords and mountains than the shocks and horrors of its mythical, titular beast. Even when the trolls are on the screen, the action tends to the procedural rather than the dark fantasy one would associate with killing them.

But thinking about it this way is to miss the point. First off, with its emphasis on the character at its center and its focus on the ins-and-outs of day-to-day troll extermination, the film is more akin to another example of the mockumentary/found-footage genre: Man Bites Dog. And like that film, it is a remarkable character study and dark comedy, with bureaucracy and the murky world of beast population control replacing the ennui and debilitating hubris of the 1992 Belgian cult classic.

This is in no small part thanks to Jespersen. With his gut puffed out and scraggly, unkempt beard framing his graven face, he carries himself through the film with a plodding deliberateness. His trailer is draped with pelts of trolls, and he keeps a UV light because he “can’t sleep in the dark.” Behind vacant, cobalt eyes, he evinces a moral and mental anguish. He is a man defeated, who is attempting to retain some shred of his humanity. If there is one thing that holds the general absurdity of this film together – and make no mistake, grand swaths of this film can seem the stuff of pulp juvenilia – it is the gravity of the naturalistic performance he puts forth.
As for the rest of the film, several trolls appear, animals and people die. Which is to say this film could have collapsed into far-fetched inanity. But the direction of André Øvredal never allows it, instead managing a tone that is at times naturalistic, at times frenetic, at times deadpan comedic, but never out of step with the action happening on screen.

Is Troll Hunter a better film than either of those mentioned? I’ve always felt the initial shock and immediacy of the Blair Witch presentation saved it being completely superficial. Troll Hunter has at its core something much more genuine and far-reaching. However, it doesn’t hit the levels of subversion of Man Bites Dog, although it does make a stab at it. But even if not as successful, it’s strong performance and assured direction make Troll Hunter a delight to watch and a worthy consideration for cult movie aficionados.

The verdict: This would need an extra set of eyes and an editor. If this weren't something of an experiment, I'd have included more examples from the other two respective films, maybe some more specific discussion of especially why Man Bites Dog is both so subversive, and, at least in my sophomoric recalling of it, effective. But I also don't own either film. So forgive me for not expanding.

Greatly Exaggerated

The problem with spending this much time away from posting is that it is, much like a distant, lapsed friendship, always difficult to find the point to start. Do we talk photo shoots, Stanley Cups, Arthur Danto? Or maybe the TV show Werewolf, finding the right lump charcoal, replacing the turntable I left back in SF? And what exactly is it with my obsession over learning Hungarian anyway?

Life, as they say, gets in the way. Between moving, co-habitating, the supreme exhaustion in working a graveyard schedule and trying to still find time to write my own stuff, not to mention the resulting despondency from having two teams lose in their respective championship games on the same day, these all matter. And they have gotten in the way, as it were. But this is not to say I have not been either missing you or forgotten you, faithful readers. It is to say that more posts will be forthcoming.

I'm planning a photo dump of some of the material I've shot in the interim months. And I'll post up one or two pieces I wrote for no reason whatsoever other than I wanted to write them. And the full breakdown of Werewolf (I was not kidding) and why it desperately needs to be rebooted, BSG-style. Also a few book reviews, maybe another film when it's been shot/edited. These will all come.


But for now, I'll have to tide you over with a pair of podcasts I've become absolutely enamored with: The Partially Examined Life and Bookfight.

As some of you may be aware, I enjoy philosophy. I'm terrible at it, but a good conversation about metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, these all exhaust me. Inspire me, but exhaust me nonetheless. This is where TPEL fits. Four former philosophy graduate students basically do a book club format of a different reading per month, and the conversations can tend to the long (I believe they have had only one that's been less than one hour), but tonally, they nail it with a mix of humor, insight, and a lot of rage at the text.

As for Bookfight, it seems to be weekly, with two editors from the lit mag Barrelhouse breaking down a different book in a nearly weekly discussion. The nice thing: they rage as well. They hold nothing back, they let their joys or their disappointments or their resentments out, and meanwhile have one of the better discussions about craft I've heard in a podcast.

But really, they rage. When appropriate. And that's a good thing.

Anyway, I'm saluting all the readers who have maxed out their allotment of patience waiting for installments. Stay tuned.

Two American Traditions

Owing to the fact that I'm an Army brat, allow me to indulge in two very American traditions. Football and the Armed Service.

The football season is winding down now, coming upon two huge contests between the 49ers vs. the Giants and the Ravens vs. Patriots. And if you're a homesick soldier roasting in the desert of Kuwait, pining for the roar of a TV and the brews being passed to and fro while everybody yells at the vacuity of the commercials in between?

You make a video, of course. And post it online.

So courtesy of the 113th Sustainment Brigade currently stationed at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, a National Guard unit out of North Carolina overseeing and assisting the drawdown in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters, we bring you this, the videos, in order of winners to losers in each game (ordering my own):

New York Giants at San Francisco 49ers:








Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots:








(Ed. note: Excuse my selective curating, but it would be completely un-American of me to not indulge in that other American pasttime: false confidence masquerading as blowhardery. I am not a communist.)

A Return to Charm City

If this was home, I had lost my frame of reference.

The Jones Falls still roared alongside, but above it were new buildings of glass and concrete, I assume erected as a visible showing of progress. They blocked the twin overpasses -- my only landmarks upon embarking from Penn Station, and so it was after ten years away, standing on the crest of this hill in the city of Baltimore, with the line of taxis idling curbside and right in front, I was struck that I had no concept of north or south.

On my last trip I flew from San Francisco to BWI (now BWI Thurgood Marshall), visiting an old high school friend. She lived in Fells Point in a converted warehouse, and of her apartment all I distinctly remember is the empty carpeted foyer and the fact that it was almost permanently frigid, apparently the contractors not understanding the finer necessities of insulation when it comes to old, airy concrete structures on the dock. I don't believe we ventured out more than three times over the visit, once to refresh our supply of tequila, once to take a road trip to NYC. The city was icy, and on the third trip out (drinks, dinner, showing off), we got a small dust of snow, none of which stuck to the stones that constituted the street.

In hindsight I should have seen her living situation as an indicator of the changes happening. But I was dumb, a naif, and still enamored with the company and the city I was then living in. So those buildings may have been there. My cardinal orientation may have already been compromised.

Ten years later, Sophie emerged from the station and we hailed a car. As we drove down St. Paul, I regained my sense of direction and, with it, a niggling feeling of familiarity.

* * *

Before I overstate: Was this home?