09 June 2008

Post 135

More thoughts on movies:

I saw Kung Fu Panda this weekend. Every preview I ever saw of that movie made it look incredibly la-ame (I thought), but a friend gave me very strong recommendation, and the reviews have mostly been surprisingly good (85% from Rotten Tomatoes, 7.8/10 on IMDb, and 3 stars from Roger Ebert), so I decided to give it a try.

I'm not sorry I did. In fact, I'm pretty happy I did. I haven't laughed that much in quite a while. Of course, if you're over the age of 13, you probably have to be a fan of Jack Black's humor for it to be really funny, but I think Jack Black is a funny, funny man, so I laughed a lot. There was this one part (the acupuncture scene, for those of you who have seen it) that, even now, has me giggling when I think about it. And it was consistently funny throughout. Really, if you're in the mood for a good laugh, this is a pretty good flick. It has--oh, it's just so funny at times!

I sense an intense revolution--a paradigm shift, if you will--coming my way. As I may have mentioned before, I go through phases--"It's a phase he's going through," is a pretty fair way to describe my behavior at any given time. At least, that's always been my theory regarding myself; lately I've been so terribly consistent in some of my opinions that I've occasionally worried that I've arrived, and I don't intend to really "arrive" until long after I'm dead.

So anyway, this change: I want to start running far, far away from my gloomy intellectualism. There was a man I met during my sojourn in Idaho whom I knew as Brother Ganns. He was a fascinating human being, absolutely fascinating; I had no idea people like him existed--never crossed my mind, actually--and, to my knowledge, he is the only one of his kind. The man gets up every morning looong before he has to so he can spend an hour reading from the Book of Mormon, and hour in the Bible, and then another hour in whatever his other reading happened to be at the time (when I knew him, he had finished his reading of Journal of Discourses, making a personal index as he went because he felt the published index was insufficient, and was then working on the complete works of Nibley). The man was the most intense gospel scholar I have ever had the pleasure of meeting; seriously, he could tell you anything you wanted to know about anything you could think of, and he could site sources to back up what he said. His library was very impressive, but the fact that most of it was in his head as well as on his shelves made it even more so.

The best part about Brother Ganns, though, was that he was a totally nut; I mean this man was crazy. He is the closest thing to a 6'2", 50-year-old Jack Russel terrier that I have ever met. Seriously, every time he saw anyone he knew, it was as though it was a happy reunion after a long separation. And, strangely enough, it was never weird, and it never got old. Quite to the contrary, actually, it was contagious, and every time I saw him made my day. He'd see us and just light up, and we'd light up, too, because he was, in fact, the most lovable individual I have ever known.

Even as a missionary, that was hard for me to understand, but the more scholastic training I receive, the more unfathomable he becomes to me because I am incredibly guilty of falling prey to the school of thought that says the only happy people are the ones who really don't understand what's going on in the world around them and that all the really smart people become cynics.

Well, I'm done with that. I'm tossing it off like an old coat. I'm tired of being pensive. From here on out, I intend to laugh more. From here on out, I intend to joke more, to become lighter in heart, to just generally be happier. I've posted a few things along the lines of "I'm gonna be happier," but I always wanted to cling to my dark realism. Book's I've read recently: Night by Elie Wiesel and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Cheery, no? The Jewish holocaust and the abuses against the Lamanites. I'm done with it; done, I say! I understand that the world has been and is and will be a somewhat terrible place, but I don't think focusing on that fact will help me grow a whole lot. In fact, it may be just as bad as all the happy feel-good escapist stuff I've been so down on lately--which maybe I'll start reading now, who knows!

That said, I do still expect what I read to be well crafted. I still think Iron Man should have died, but I'm okay with him surviving; I just wish that the story would have led to that denouement a little more logically.

So I'm repenting. I'm changing my gloomy ways. Who's with me?

9 comments:

  1. Hooray for optimism! And a question: is it possible to be ungloomily pensive? For some reason, I associate gloom and pensiveness. And if you want to read something random that I forgot to list on my non-fiction post, read Ken Jennings' Brainiac. It's just fun.

    Also, you should start writing jokes. Because I don't know any. And you could help me!

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  2. I, too, associate gloom and pensiveness, but I don't think the two HAVE go together.

    Here, a wise person would say something about leading a balanced life and pensiveness is good so long as it doesn't lead to isolation because happiness is found in serving and blah blah blah--unfortunately, I am not that wise person because I don't know anything about leading a balanced life, but I would assume true wisdom says something about balance. If you never take time to think, that's bad, but if all you do is think, that isn't really any better.

    Thanks for the recommendation. I'll probably go pick that up as soon as I'm done online right now (it's checked in at my local library, I just learned).

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  3. .

    Can you really just make a decision like that?

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  4. Agreed, hooray for optimism!

    I love posts like this. ^.^ Makes me feel I'm getting to know you better.

    And yeah, that's a change for you Schmetter. I wasn't expecting you to see Kung Fu Panda. Looked too... wild and crazy.

    Yeah... I've never been a fan of the whole "if you're happy, you don't understand what's going on" thing... But yeah, I love people like Bro. Ganns. ^.^ They're always awesome to be around. They're just... astounding people. They're so smart, but they can turn around and be so funny.

    You do have to be careful with sudden changes, 'cause the pendulum tends to swing a little too much the other way... But I'm all for optimism. ^.^

    Good luck with your metomorphosis, young butterfly. ^.~

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  5. And hey, if my vote counts any, I think you've got a pretty good handle on being happy and logical.

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  6. I think you really can make a decision just like that. The implementation of said decision might take efforts, but . . .

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  7. Congratulations. I always new you couldn't escape escapist fiction forever.

    Some recommendations for worth-your-time escapist fiction:

    C.S. Lewis - Chronicles of Narnia
    (always read lewis, or watch what he wrote as given by film makers, like you think he's about to say something about God or how people view God, etc. etc. - he'll never disappoint. In this particular series the name Aslan is synonimous with God or Christ.)

    Lloyd Alexander - The Prydain Chronicles... occasionaly contrived, but other than that very good. Makes lots of moral statements by means of story telling.

    Both of those were written in the good old days of the hundred page novel -7(?) & 5 books in each set, and if you get them in compiled single volume form they look like today's novels - they're short and to the point without skipping the good stuff.

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  8. So I went and saw Kung Fu Panda because of your recommendation. I also wasn't sorry. Fun show. Thanks.

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