Ghosts of Halloweens Past

While sorting through some old photos, I came across a few of my costume choices from previous years...

This Is Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!

Happy All Hallow's Eve all! My favorite holiday of the year is upon us.

A Spooky Sonic Treat

Some All Hallow's Eve music for your frightening entertainment.

LISTEN

Remember the golden age of masochistic video games?

The games that caused you to hurl the controller across the room. The games that caused you to curse like a drunken sailor. The games that convinced you they were created for the sole purpose of driving you totally, bad-shit insane. Ahh, but we loved them so. Follow the link below to take a walk down memory lane. I would only make the following addition: every Water Temple from every Legend of Zelda game. My thumbs still ache from the countless hours.


You Have Died of Dysentery

Camera Obscura

"Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell."

- Kim Edwards

Here are a few photos I've taken over the summer. Each one whispers of solitude.

A Place That Never Existed

Alone at Night

Lost Remembrance

Obscured by the Sun

HIdden Rest

Summer's First Shedding

Tree of Life

Steps Not Taken

Summer Fades 

Finding the Park

Breaking Bad: Season 5, Episode 9 - Guns at Dawn

Heisenberg was Here: Walt takes in the destruction wrought by Heisenberg

In 2009, I sat down one evening to watch Breaking Bad, a show then finishing up its second-season. All I knew was that it was on AMC, and like Showtime’s Weeds, told the story of an unlikely middle-class character that gets involved in the drug business because of money problems. Another thing I knew was that it starred Malcolm’s dad from Malcolm in the Middle (Bryan Cranston). Like many of premium cable’s shows over the last decade, I was hooked after one episode. After a marathon session of the entire season followed by the first half of the second season the following evening, I was caught up with the rest of fans, anticipating the next episode and what would happen  to partners-in-crime, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.

As much as I loved Weeds, this show is something entirely different and rises to places that show played with but never actually went.  Similar to Weeds, Breaking Bad uses humor regularly to lighten the show’s darker elements. Initially, the absurdity of a socially awkward, somewhat bumbling high school chemistry teacher partnering up with a drug-dealing, gangster wannabe and his former student to cook meth provides many of the shows plotlines, often to humorous effect. Despite the smiles and laughs, the viewer knows this is dangerous territory to be treading. We always knew we were relatively safe in the world of Weeds with its beautiful, white woman playing in the world of pot dealing (even though later seasons did successfully raise the stakes the higher she reached on the food chain, the show never tried to be what it wasn’t) Walter White’s new universe centers around a drug whose involvement brings with it far more dangerous repercussions, definitely from the effects of use and arguably more deadly and shady characters involved in its production and distribution.

We’ve always had a suspicion that this story wouldn’t end well. Walter White gradually transformed from protagonist to antagonist during the course of the show’s four and a half seasons. This metamorphosis has been scripted brilliantly. The show hasn’t hid it from us. It’s been in plain view. Walt’s beginning moral argument for making money to provide his family because of his terminal cancer diagnosis gives us just enough of a grey area to justify accompanying him on his journey. At each step along the way, that area has grown darker and darker until eventually you realize you’re sitting in a pitch black room and the hero you’ve rooted for is now the villain. Most of the time, the character was walking a fine line between the two and then becoming both at once. We’re not used to experiencing this in our stories. Sure, we’ve become accustomed and now enjoy cheering on the anti-hero. The current goldmine of quality TV shows on premium channel owes much to this trope. Shows like Weeds, The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood, just to name a few, have explored this character deftly. What we haven’t experienced is anything quite like this. At the end of the last episode before the mid-season break, Walt has seemingly left the business and promises his wife Skyler that he’s done with it. There’s something that rings hollow here, not because we don’t necessarily believe he’ll keep his word (although there’s nothing to make us think he will), it’s that we’ve stopped caring for this character and hoping he succeeds. It doesn’t seem right to like and cheer on the person that could do the things he’s done and gone to the places he’s went. And now what? Just dust off and continue on? No. We lost Walt somehwhere along the way and need this to play out now. We missed the point we could get off the train, and although the last stretch has nearly no chance of being pretty, our eyes are open and we need to see. There was always a sense of hoping and ultimately knowing that Nancy Botwin would get out of the dangerous and often hilarious situations she got herself into on Weeds. We no longer have that empathy for Walter White. Let the chips fall where they may.

With only eight episodes to go, season five’s second-half opener, “Blood Money,” picks up directly after the first-half’s finale. “Blood Money” explores the consequences of gaining from wrongful or criminal deeds, whether that is Skyler not turning Walt in because of the effects it would have on her family, Jesse going along with Walt down the rabbit hole, or Walt himself, escalating things to a point where there can be no peaceful resolution among many other vile things. There is also something else that saturates the entire episode and all of the show’s remaining characters: a sense of staying in one place too long and not knowing it until too late.

Even as a viewer I had this feeling during the episode’s first minutes. The show opens in a style similar to the way the airplane crash was shown to us throughout season two. That season had several episodes open with the aftermath of the crash without telling you what it was you were seeing. One was left with a host of theories as to what it was building to but not fully revealed until the season’s finale. This season’s first episode showed a future version of Walter White obtaining a car with guns and supplies in the trunk and eating breakfast at a diner. It’s slowly shown that it is his birthday, and the shape his bacon is placed in by a stone-faced Walt lets you know that it is his 51^st birthday. We know this because he does the same thing in the series’ first episode for his 50^th surrounded by his family. What has happened up to this point is left to the imagination. We are not shown future Walt again until this episode. He returns to his home, a place we’ve become accustomed to seeing and feel comfortable in. Now it is boarded up and weeds grow high in the yard around it. “No trespassing” signs are on the erected fence around the property and and on the gate at the end of the drive. The backyard pool, now drained, has become a miniature skate park to some of the neighborhood youth. Walt takes a crowbar from out of his car’s trunk, the same one from the season opener, which is filled with what looks like enough supplies to fully equip a team of Navy SEALS on a covert mission. After breaking the padlock on the front door, we see what has become of his old home. Doors look as if they have been broken down, possibly from a police raid, no furniture remains, and light falls in beams through the boarded up windows illuminating the dust that’s built up. He hears and then looks out onto the skateboarders before going over to an electrical outlet. Taking out a screwdriver, he begins to remove its cover plate. Then we flash to opening credits. The familiar periodic table and smoke from burning methamphetamine, accompanied by the show’s theme music, always made me excited. It was one of those feelings you get when viewing the opening moments of a show you love and can’t wait to see what happens next. This time, however, I had a feeling of unease, almost dread. There was a finality here that often isn’t felt even with a series’ final episode. It was as if I’d been here too long. The journey with Walter White was over and I was now with Heisenberg.

Everyone and everything now feel as if they’ve stayed too long at the party and don’t quite know how to say their goodbyes and make an exit. Jesse, who I’ve long felt was the true protagonist of the show and as close to a hero as we’re going to get, is practically swimming in it. The camera follows him from one place to the next, dragging two oversized duffle-bags filled with five million dollars. As his friends and former drug runners get high in his living room, now dark and looking like it could be a den for urban squatters and drug addicts, one of them tells about the script he once wrote for Star Trek. The same story could’ve been told by these two likable misfits in an earlier season and it would’ve had a completely different feel and provoked a different reaction. Here though, while the story is still hilarious, it doesn’t give any joy. The camera frames Jesse in the center of these two, sitting with a hundred-yard stare. This is a kid that has been here too long, seen and done too many things, and now it’s time to leave. The problem is that he can’t leave. The death of the kid in the desert guaranteed that, and he’s haunted by the memory and the part he played in it. All of these early Jesse scenes are dimly lit and everything looks old and worn. When he goes to give the money to Saul, the reception area looks like it could be the waiting room at the world’s oldest funeral home. The music playing is even a tinny sounding recording of Battle Hymn of the Republic. Even Saul’s office is darker than usual, and the middle-aged cleaning lady he’s obviously just had sex with is not played for humorous effect. The time with Saul and his laughable persona has played out. Is it just me, or does the Constitution painted on the walls of Saul’s office look larger and more prominent? It’s also as if the only light in the room fell on that writing like a spotlight.

While the child’s death haunts Jesse, it’s the death of Mike that has completely broken him. When Walt visits to try to reason with him about giving  the money to Mike’s granddaughter and the dead boy’s parents, he tries to convince Jesse that he hasn’t offed Mike and that he’s alive and well, spinning lies without effort and off the cuff, something that has worked on Jesse in the past. This time Jesse ain’t buying it, and neither are we. We don’t even spend a good deal of time with him trying to delude his former partner and protege. It all has an air of being done too many times. When Walt ends the conversation with “I need you to believe this, Jesse,” we don’t even pretend anymore that it's because Walt can't deal with Jesse feeling badly about him. It is simply because he doesn’t want to have to do what he sees as the obvious and inevitable alternative: killing Jesse. As Jesse lies back to Walt, facing away from him, tears wet his eyes. He knows he’s stayed too long with Walt and what the price has been. Mike was the father  figure he had wanted his whole life, one that the early-Walt hinted at becoming. When Walt says “there’s nothing left to do but try to live decently,” we know it’s true except for the “live decently” part.

The brief appearance by Lydia, nervous, former associate of Walt, would previously have brought some light-hearted fun. The unlikely business-woman was always just on the cusp of being unbelievable as someone in her position because of her neurotic and paranoid nature, but it never completely crossed that line. It allowed for another colorful  and fun(if somewhat two-dimensional) character to be put in place to fill out Heisenberg's empire building dreams. It also added a touch of humor the show does so well. By now, though, her presence only emphasizes the sense of finality. There is nothing funny in her usual nervous tics and playing with sunglasses. It just underlines the time for building things is over. It helps set the stage for the final act, which will likely involve tearing everything down. The question is how far that destruction will reach and who will be caught in the inevitable falling debris.

Walt finally realizes that Hank has found and taken his copy of Leaves of Grass with the inscription from Gale. In the middle of the night, he goes outside in his robe and slippers. It’s at this point, with the realization coming to him, and all of the characters in place, we finally begin to pick up and move toward that inevitable destruction. It’s a scene we’re familiar with. Walt stands and you can almost see the wheels spinning in his brain, running through possibility after possibility, various scenarios, calculating odds and outcomes. Once this was the moment where Walter White would desperately come to a decision about a way to get out of a situation that seemed impossible to avoid. His eyebrows would arch, and his head would slowly turn to the side. This however is something different. We aren’t seeing a plan form for miraculous escape by characters we’ve grown to love. We are watching Heisenberg realize his enemy has found him and there is nothing but cold-blooded calculation etched into his face.

I was surprised at how soon the confrontation between Hank and Walt occurs, when Walt asks about the GPS tracking device found on his car and earlier used by the two of them to track Gus. I’m happy that it’s happened this early though, as it provides less time to be filled with build-up and more for the fireworks to fill up the sky. There is a moment before the confrontation when Walt is walking away from Hank and toward his car. He stops and stares forward briefly, deciding whether to play a final gambit. He looks pained and nervous about the decision. I think this is the last time we see Walter White, and it’s a brief and final farewell from the character we cared for and cheered as he slowly dug a deep, dark hole for himself and everyone around him. As Hank makes the ultimatum about what is to be done, Walt throws away the mask entirely, and Heisenberg responds with his own statement followed by a threat that frightens even the veteran DEA officer. We’re left with Breaking Bad’s version of a standoff between gunslingers, two arch-enemies finally meeting face to face on a dusty street after foiling each other time and again, revolvers at the ready. Who pulls and shoots first?

It's Not TV, It's HBO

We’re experiencing something of a Golden Age for television, especially premium and subscription channels. As most other art mediums struggle to make a profit, or in some cases to merely survive, channels like AMC, ShowTime, and HBO are creating programming that is the gold standard for both audience and critical praise as well as earning profits while sometimes maintaining budgets that would have spelled disaster even five years ago. Now Netflix has gotten in on the “orginal programming” game, producing two excellent shows: House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. Not very long ago, I was proud to not own a TV. Thankfully, the internet and a computer has evolved to be nearly a substitute. 

I’ve decided this is the perfect time to review one of my favorite shows, Breaking Bad. There are eight final episodes. For the next two months, meet me here on Monday morning (possibly late Sunday night). Take a look at my reaction to Walt/Heisenberg’s final maneuvering and see how horrible things can go. I have a feeling the show runners have one single goal: scorched earth.

Mix Tape Memorries: VOL. 1

[Mix Tape Memories is a series of posts looking at music that is so important to me that it seems to have affected my life or outlook on it. It originally appeared on The Road Meanders.]

“The problem with thinking about your own past is you forget its genesis and start to feel useless awe towards your earlier self.”    - Brian Eno

There are only a few.

Tens of thousands of songs have washed over me. They’ve flitted by barely noticed. They’ve hovered about, only to continue past on the breeze never to be thought of again. They’ve slammed into me like a hurricane altering my landscape, not always for the better. They’ve wiggled into my brain, despite erecting a tower of iron will to keep them out. They've produced smiles and tears, excitement and indifference. A few of them…well, it seems a few have woven into the double helix of my being, becoming part of me.

This continuing series will explore some of those few. They’re not always good. Some of them I don’t even like anymore. Some I still hit repeat to hear a second time, even though I’ve heard them more times than I can count. There really is no order to how these will appear, nothing chronological or theme driven; well, not intentionally anyway. Perhaps you’ll find some along the way.

(I’m fully aware of the fact that a Radiohead song worms its way into nearly every playlist I’ve ever made. I’m also fully aware of how much fun it is for certain people to bring up this fact. To provide joy in your life, I’m committed to placing one in every one of these installments.)

VOLUME 1

“Wave of Mutilation”                                   The Pixies                                Doolittle

This was one of those gateway drug songs. I’m pretty certain this was the first Pixies song that I heard and listened to over and over, thanks to Pump Up the Volume. (Oh the halcyon days when Christian Slater was cute and dated Winona Ryder) This led to a passionate love affair with Frank Black/Black Francis and crew. Memories of driving my first car at 16 to the mall in Huntington, WV with my best friend Paul. Cut me some slack…it was Appalachia. Where else do you go when skipping school? It was either that or drinking beers at the local hot spot: the Dairy Queen parking lot.

         LYRICS              

                                                   

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

Pixies front man, Francis, described the song as being about "Japanese businessmen doing murder-suicides with their families because they'd failed in business, and they're driving off a pier into the ocean."

“A Better Son/Daughter”                            Rilo Kiley                         The Execution of All Things

  

The unofficial anthem for Depressives since 2002. I already loved this song, but when in one of my “delicate states” during the ’08 election while working in Ann Arbor, MI, one of my organizers took me to see Rilo Kiley after work. I was barely holding it together, working 12-16 hour days, six days a week, travelling between five cities running offices, and technically not even having a permanent address for six months. Seeing this song performed live somehow struck me like a tuning fork. I swam in it. Time slowed and the song stretched and warped and created a bubble in time. All of this and I was not even on drugs. To this day, when I hit one of those “lows  so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap,” this song holds as much a chance of pulling me up as a handful of Klonapen.

                                                                      LYRICS            

                                          

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

The album that “A Better Son/Daughter” appears on, The Execution of All Things is strung together by a song that is broken into pieces and that trails between several tracks. Called "And That’s How I Choose to Remember It", it tells the story of lead singer Jenny Lewis' childhood and her parents' divorce. This theme is visited throughout the album, which is lyrically filled with childhood recollections of loss, displacement, anger and hopelessness.

“Everybody Wants to Rule the World”               Tears for Fears             Songs From the Big Chair

One of the earliest ones. A hot summer, one of those impossible summers that only exists in the memory of your childhood, endless and full of those things that have become clichés to our adult selves. Music was playing. A festival. I was painfully shy. Thousands of people. Excitement and fear mingling impossibly together. Bright banners or possibly flags. My first encounter with people from another country. And that music playing. Background really. Until this song somehow cut through all of the chaos and possibility. I don’t remember actually stopping and listening to it exactly. It just was. And is.

LYRICS        

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

Ironically, considering the song's overwhelming success, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" was somewhat of an afterthought during the recording of Songs from the Big Chair. According to Roland Orzabal, he initially regarded the song as a lightweight that would not fit with the rest of the album. It was producer Chris Hughes who convinced him to try recording it, in a calculated effort to cross over into American chart success.

“Nemesis”                                        Shriekback                                                      Oil & Gold

If my brother is responsible for introducing me to the love of and depth and breadth of music, then “Nemesis” was my training wheels to explore on my own. The solid base he provided led me to explore early 80s Goth and Industrial. I also found my first way to communicate with others with some measure of confidence.

I met brothers Scott and Todd, friends of Jason, the de facto leader of my band of misfit toys. I instantly was enamored with the two of them (my proto-straight boy crushes). I had no way to connect with them. What did I have to talk about that they would find interesting? My foray into discovering new music on my own had produced Sisters of Mercy and their album Floodland. That was to become my currency. The brothers were music geeks, and I offered Sisters of Mercy. They re-paid with Shriekback. “Nemesis,” it turned out, was more than a fair trade. My first transaction complete, I opened up and made friends with two people I had previously elevated far above me.

LYRICS       

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

The song "Nemesis" is apparently about the hypothetical star orbiting the Sun, although the video makes it clear that the comic-book anti-hero Nemesis the Warlock was also on the band's mind.

“Subterranean Homesick Alien”                Radiohead                                      OK Computer

My first Radiohead entry (and obviously not the last). The narrative of this song is what struck me. The dreamer is granted an amazing experience and on return is not believed. Upon first hearing this song, I instantly related. I may or may not have played it while “on a country lane, late at night while I’m driving.” Oh, who are we kidding? Of course I did.

One part of the lyrics has always stuck out to me and stymied me as to the meaning. I see two options, but it’s most likely I created the second option:

“Take me on board their beautiful ship

  Show me the world as I'd love to see it”

Now the obvious choice, I think, is that he sees the world from high above, from a perspective only ever imagined. I like to think, however, that it also means they show him the world in a better state, more peaceful, with meaning and hope. I suppose it could mean either or both. It’s one of those things I don’t want to know the answer to or even if there is an answer. Each time I drive down that country lane, late at night, with just slightly more than a casual glance at the stars, I want to hold that sliver of wonder.

LYRICS

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

The title is a reference to the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues", and the science fiction-inspired song describes an isolated narrator who fantasizes about being abducted by extraterrestrials. The narrator speculates that, upon returning to Earth, his friends would not believe his story and he would remain a misfit. The lyrics were inspired by a school assignment from Thom Yorke's time at Abingdon School to write a piece of "Martian poetry", a British literary movement of works that humorously re-contextualizes mundane aspects of human life from an alien "Martian" perspective.

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The Road Travelled

My writing has always existed in silos. It happens even before the first word hits the page. Let's say I have an idea for a story and I want to write a shorter piece exploring this idea to see if something larger exists in it. I have a notebook for that! A contemplation on the lyrics of a song? Yup, there's a specific journal for that. What about some random thoughts while sitting in the park? Mmhmm. Two different books to scribe those in. Now which category will it fall under and which one should it go in? You get the picture. Often, the process of determining where something will be written destroys the idea in its infancy. When I get an idea, and I think it's a good one, chances are the Muse strikes like a rattlesnake: full of energy and lightning quick. Any substantial delay bores her and she's likely to go in search of minds quicker acting than mine. Of all those creatively imbued and idea-filled spirits I get one with ADD.

Recently I started another blog, The Road Meanders. It's a conceptual blog between myself and a friend to help us with a collaborative writing project. While the blog is meant to be a collection of thoughts and not narrowly focused on only the actual creation of the project, I've found myself allowing more and broader themed writing get past my inner gatekeeper and onto the page. I'm hoping to reign it in a bit and allow this blog to be the recipient of a lot of things. I'll just think of it like this: LandsPost is the old, tattered brown journal with the wine stain on the back cover and The Road Meanders is the green and yellow striped notebook with the Smurfs sticker.

This blog is from the real me, or as close as you'll get in a medium such as this. The Road Meanders is wrtten by Big Pink Kraken, who's more than just a pen name and not quite an alter-ego. It's "a" me but boiled down to highlight what aspects I want to get at. This allows the purpose of the blog to be realized I think. He's not a bad guy. You might even like him. If you're interested in meeting the two travellers wandering down The Road, head over and travel with them a while. They will probably enjoy the company.

The Road Meanders

Phoenix Rising

It's been a while. In fact, I completely forgot about this little place. It was my first attempt at a blog. Let's resurrect it from the ashes, shall we?