The Michael Canfield Channel

Some things take a long time ...

It's not always clear which things these are, nor is it often clear (certainly not often enough) how long each long time will be. Maybe that's the lesson I should take from this minor revelation. I'm not talking about writing (not exclusively about writing anyway). It took me a long long time to realize that thinking about how long things are taking is not only a poor use of time but is counterproductive. In comparison to, say, just slacking off, being over preoccupied with how slow, haphazard, and frustrating the rate of progress is, is and order off magnitude more counterproductive than daydreaming. This assumes that I have realized it, of which I'm not really certain the more I think about it.

Some things don't take very long at all, such as this blog post, and that might say more than I should really admit about this blog post -- which reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon, which featured a man outside a hippie restaurant seeing a sign in the window which read: Vagueness Spoke Here.

Preposting update: writing this post actually took me longer, a lot longer, than I thought it would. But I learned some things in writing it, and clarified my own ideas (to what small extent they are clarified, anyhow) in unanticipated ways.

Postposting update: (Good gracious Great googly moogly Great Caesar's Ghost, will I ever finish this post?) I forgot to include this point: there is a fudge in all of this. Tasks occur in time, and it is impossible to finish anything outside of time. But creating an imaginary bubble in which to pretend time is unimportant in order to get on with the getting on seems to me a useful effort from (heh) time to time.

Your own private Annika

The most recent read I've enjoyed most is Bob Harris' Prisoner of Trebekistan. It's a book about the author's experience playing Jeopardy, only it's about a lot of other things too.  Harris is a life-embracing kind of guy. He's also a fine writer, funny, honest, and thoughtful. In this passage Harris looks back at the day he met his current girlfriend with the certain knowledge that that relationship is now over, though neither will admit it to the other yet:

I had met Annika in a coffee shop in Cleveland a couple of years earlier. Her eyes were the same color as my drink that day, and are now the color of whatever type of coffee you like best. (No matter what I write, you'll conjure your own private Annika anyway. All I ask is that you make her anatomically correct, petite, and extraordinarily lovely. Whatever shade of coffee you would find the prettiest, that is the correct color for your Annika's eyes. Her hair, however, is the same color as the hair of someone you loved once and no longer know.) My own personal Annika had eyes which were one cream with a touch of cocoa. Which is to say: eyes you'd consider spending your whole life looking at.

Harris makes a lot of friends in the years he was involved with a TV show, has a lot of adventures, and even find true love with a Hugo-winning-Buffy-writer. Not that the path of true love is ... well, just read it and see for yourself.

My Super-Conflicted Movie-Going Experience

Uma Thurman is a superhero, so this movie gets fifteen thumbs up. And the first half hour is pretty good. Luke Wilson plays a shallow nebbish who eff's her and can't wait to dump her for the similarly shallow character (played by always-adorable Anna Faris) who leads him on for the hell of it, even though she has a boyfriend and just uses Luke to feed her ego. No, no, I've got that all wrong.

Luke Wilson is a great guy, you see, and the Anna Faris character is a great girl. These are apparently the good people. Luke has a problem. His problem is that he needs to break up with his crazy girlfriend and he doesn't know whether to be a man and do it straight up, or try to weasel out of it. This being a light comedy and Luke such a lovable guy, he chooses to weasel out.

Now young Luke has another problem, his super ex-girlfriend is psycho and makes his life hell. He decides the only thing to do is finally sit down and tell her the truth and talk it out like adults. Oh, he doesn't? First he decided to trap his ex and expose her to kryptonite-like stuff. He will rob her of her powers, the world of its hero, because that is what is easiest for him, you see.

He is the protagonist of the movie, and isn't that how protagonists behave? Isn't that what Lois Lane would do in the same situation? She wouldn't? Hm. I don't understand this. Is this the bizarro world? Of course! That is it. This is an avant-garde film, at last we see the superhero-motif explored at movie-length from the p.o.v. of villains.

Maybe not, maybe I am giving the filmmakers too much credit.

Whatever their intention, Reitman and friends have made what is clearly the greatest superhero film of all time.

Uma Thurman uses her x-ray powers to somehow mine a vein of humanity from within her hatefully-written character, she proves invulnerable to cynically-contrived scenarios, and every moment she is on screen she has our sympathy and our affection; she soars above this shit, and only she has the strength to protect us from the foul misbegotten ill-conceived misdirection of effort entitled My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

For her pains, the filmmakers don't even bother to give her a name behind her super-initial. And I thought killing Bill was tough.

Uma Thurman is a superhero.