The one thing about knowledge is that no matter how much you think you know, there is always something out there that you don't. About three years ago I was in a job where I felt like I was finally had it all figured out. There were few surprises and I had become something of an expert in my area. Sure there were things I didn't know, but I was at a point where I knew most everything I needed to in order to do my job effectively. It was very comforting to be in that position. At the same time though it felt like maybe I had peaked and there was nothing else for me learn, or at least nothing else I wanted to learn. It reminded me of what Phil said about God; "Maybe he's not omnipotent. He's just been around so long he knows everything." For some people when they get to that spot in their life or career they feel like they've arrived. It's what a lot of people are working towards. There is some sense that eventually you'll get to a point where your knowledge about a particular thing is complete. There is something known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which recognizes the fact that the more you learn about a subject, the less likely you are to consider yourself an expert because you have actual knowledge of how much you don't know.
In the technical world one of the last things you want is to have your knowledge plateau. The moment you stop learning new things is when you start becoming irrelevant. It may take a long time before anyone, including yourself, notices this fact, but by the time you do it may be too late to do anything about it because you'll spend so much effort trying to catch up. I guess if you think about it, the same is probably true for other areas outside the technical world. So once I reached the level of what felt like expert I started to look around for something else so that I could keep that eventuality of being out of touch away a little bit longer. In the past three years I returned to college and learned about a whole different area that I had only briefly touched on before. I wasn't exactly out of my element, but it had been nearly ten years since I was last in any kind of formal schooling. After that I had three different jobs, each one forcing me to admit that despite any knowledge or education that I have, I still knew next to nothing regarding the actual work involved. I am now the opposite of an expert.
It can be very frustrating not knowing something. It's even more frustrating to have forgotten something you once knew. Where does all our knowledge go? You know how they say you never really forget how to ride a bike? Your body just remembers because it was such a complex array of movements that your muscles retained the memory of it. So even if you haven't ridden a bicycle in a couple decades you'll still have the ability to hop on and peddle away, maybe a bit wobbly at first, but it would come back to you pretty quickly. It would take something drastic for you to lose that knowledge completely. If that's true for something like riding a bike then would that mean while we may forget something we learned a long time ago our body physically retains the knowledge somehow? If everything I've learned is somehow stored in my cells then is it possible for that knowledge to be passed along to the next generation? If eye color or height can be influenced by our parents then what's preventing our cellular knowledge from being given to our children? Or more importantly, what can we do to access that information? You may have heard the story about the experiment where a flatworm is sent through a maze until it knows its way. That worm is ground up and fed to another flatworm. This new flatworm is able to navigate the maze much easier, indicating that information may have some kind of physical component to it. Granted flatworms are a very simple organism compared to a person, but I have a feeling scientists are looking at the general idea that knowledge and experience is stored inside in ways we don't fully understand.
There is a somewhat scary aspect to what we learn though. Our bodies are fairly fragile when you think about it. While we can take a lot of punishment at times, often it takes only a single event or trauma that could change everything. People with head injuries have had to relearn everything over again, including how to walk. It seems to run contrary to the idea of muscle memory. The way I look at it though is imagine if all the information in your brain where a library and your brain had the index to where everything was stored. That index get damaged and the information doesn't necessarily go away, but you've lost the ability to efficiently access it. Your first kiss is out there somewhere, but you may never find it again. In a sense that type of injury could disconnect our ability to access muscle memory. The idea that something like that could happen makes our knowledge even more precious.
It's entirely possible that everything we've experienced has been recorded by our brain and stored somewhere. It's been said that we only use a fraction of our brain. This isn't entirely true though. We use all of our brain, but we don't all use it as efficiently as we could. Plus we don't fully comprehend how information is stored and retrieved or if there is a limit to our storage capacity for new information. The physical aspect of our bodies break down before we can really test the limits of what our brains could do given enough time. Some day though we may be able to access anything that we've experienced with total recall. If we are able to have that kind of clarity regarding the past, imagine what it would do for our future.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
On The Weight of the World
Everywhere we look it seems as though the world is filled with apathy. It's not exactly a new thing, but more and more people are separating themselves from everyone else because often times the world is just so overwhelming that it's easier to filter everything. I was watching a television show online so the commercials were limited. During the course of two hours though I was shown that people in third world nations desperately need prosthetic limbs, people everywhere are starving, that majority of Africa is unemployed and wants to work, and autism seems to be on the rise. Now granted among those messages there were commercials for turbo boosted sport utility vehicles and upcoming movies. It seems almost ludicrous that you can have a message about an entire continent that's desperately trying to make enough money to feed itself followed by an ad for a luxury car that had a blu-ray player built in. I'm not saying it's wrong for people to have or want luxury cars, but it kind of forces you have some perspective about the world in general. Then again, most people see either and they immediately tune it out.
Remember what it was like as a kid when there were situations that were just so exciting that you couldn't take it? Or if you have kids today there are those moments when you see them getting so wound up that the crash is going to be ugly. There are times when so much is going on that we simply can't process it all. We try to, but more often than not we reach our breaking point before we're ready to admit it. The thing is that same thing can happen to us as adults. It would be easy to allow the world to overwhelm us with all that's going on. Sure there are a seemingly endless stream of negative things coming at us. On the flip side though there are so many good things out there too that we'd use up all our energy if we tried to keep up with them all. In order to protect ourselves from this onslaught we have to close our eyes to most of it, even if it means turning away from things that we could make a difference in.
I think part of the reason politics are so charged is because they often try to find an issue that cause an immediate reaction. That way people will focus on a singular issue with emotion rather than always with reason. A rational person would understand that any issue has more than one side. Also there may be more than one solution to any given problem. Some politicians feel it's easier to gather support for their view by simply pushing that button rather than digging deeper. And they know that certain things are more important than others. Talk to a group of people who are retired or nearing retirement and mention Social Security in order to get their attention. Want to polarize a group of people against another group of people you just have to focus on something they feel strongly about and heighten the differences between them and their opposition. I personally think everyone should be concerned with education in this country. There are people who don't have kids who couldn't care less about what happens with teacher salary, test scores, or arts in the schools. For them they are more concerned with property taxes or what the government is doing about air quality. Those are legitimate concerns, but it's hard to make them realize that education affects them regardless of if they have kids or not. Guess who is going to be running the country in twenty years? Those same people that had underpaid teachers or standards so low that you'd trip over them. On the other side you may have a teacher who can't be bothered to question why her local government doesn't have a recycling station within fifty miles of their home.
In the computer world there is a thing called processing power, which is essentially the amount of information that can be handled by the computer at any given time. It has a limit and you can't exceed it. If you try then something will have to be put aside for something else. Our minds are very similar in that regard. A person can only concern themselves with so much before it all becomes so overwhelming that either they shut down or something has to be removed from the equation. The thing is no matter how good or bad your life is, we all have problems. When compared to another person they may seem massive or trivial, but they are our problems. Add to our own problems those of our loved ones. You could take on the concerns of your significant other or children or siblings. Once you have all that add on those other outside issues that concern you. Millions of chickens are being slaughtered for our consumption and yet the food we eat is becoming so processed that one has to wonder what we're really eating at this point. Gasoline prices are rising rapidly and no one seems to have a clear grasp on a reasonable alternative, meaning that within the next twenty years industry as we know it may either collapse or have to drastically change based on new needs. Medical care in this country is becoming so expensive and depersonalized that it's easy to imagine that no matter how well off you are now, it would only take a prolonged illness to wipe out everything you've worked for so that you could be forced to chose between paying for medication or food. For someone each of those issues is very important and that's only an example of what's out there. So it becomes easy to see how apathy takes hold. As Somerset said "Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work."
So how do we not close ourselves to the world and at the same time not open ourselves up so much that we lose ourselves instead? Maybe life is a lot like the salad buffet, where you pick and choose the things that are most important to you and hope that while you're fighting for the cure to cancer that someone else is fighting just as hard for clean air. No single one of us can fix everything and that often leads us to believe that the problems are too big for us to even look at. I know that if I throw away a plastic bottle rather than recycle it, it's not going to make or break the planet. I know that my vote may not decide who the next President is. That doesn't mean I should just throw my hands in the air and say that nothing I do matters because I'm such a small part of a larger world. I may not be able to fix the world's problems on my own, but when we stop trying and only care about ourselves then we've truly failed and given into the weight of the world.
Remember what it was like as a kid when there were situations that were just so exciting that you couldn't take it? Or if you have kids today there are those moments when you see them getting so wound up that the crash is going to be ugly. There are times when so much is going on that we simply can't process it all. We try to, but more often than not we reach our breaking point before we're ready to admit it. The thing is that same thing can happen to us as adults. It would be easy to allow the world to overwhelm us with all that's going on. Sure there are a seemingly endless stream of negative things coming at us. On the flip side though there are so many good things out there too that we'd use up all our energy if we tried to keep up with them all. In order to protect ourselves from this onslaught we have to close our eyes to most of it, even if it means turning away from things that we could make a difference in.
I think part of the reason politics are so charged is because they often try to find an issue that cause an immediate reaction. That way people will focus on a singular issue with emotion rather than always with reason. A rational person would understand that any issue has more than one side. Also there may be more than one solution to any given problem. Some politicians feel it's easier to gather support for their view by simply pushing that button rather than digging deeper. And they know that certain things are more important than others. Talk to a group of people who are retired or nearing retirement and mention Social Security in order to get their attention. Want to polarize a group of people against another group of people you just have to focus on something they feel strongly about and heighten the differences between them and their opposition. I personally think everyone should be concerned with education in this country. There are people who don't have kids who couldn't care less about what happens with teacher salary, test scores, or arts in the schools. For them they are more concerned with property taxes or what the government is doing about air quality. Those are legitimate concerns, but it's hard to make them realize that education affects them regardless of if they have kids or not. Guess who is going to be running the country in twenty years? Those same people that had underpaid teachers or standards so low that you'd trip over them. On the other side you may have a teacher who can't be bothered to question why her local government doesn't have a recycling station within fifty miles of their home.
In the computer world there is a thing called processing power, which is essentially the amount of information that can be handled by the computer at any given time. It has a limit and you can't exceed it. If you try then something will have to be put aside for something else. Our minds are very similar in that regard. A person can only concern themselves with so much before it all becomes so overwhelming that either they shut down or something has to be removed from the equation. The thing is no matter how good or bad your life is, we all have problems. When compared to another person they may seem massive or trivial, but they are our problems. Add to our own problems those of our loved ones. You could take on the concerns of your significant other or children or siblings. Once you have all that add on those other outside issues that concern you. Millions of chickens are being slaughtered for our consumption and yet the food we eat is becoming so processed that one has to wonder what we're really eating at this point. Gasoline prices are rising rapidly and no one seems to have a clear grasp on a reasonable alternative, meaning that within the next twenty years industry as we know it may either collapse or have to drastically change based on new needs. Medical care in this country is becoming so expensive and depersonalized that it's easy to imagine that no matter how well off you are now, it would only take a prolonged illness to wipe out everything you've worked for so that you could be forced to chose between paying for medication or food. For someone each of those issues is very important and that's only an example of what's out there. So it becomes easy to see how apathy takes hold. As Somerset said "Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work."
So how do we not close ourselves to the world and at the same time not open ourselves up so much that we lose ourselves instead? Maybe life is a lot like the salad buffet, where you pick and choose the things that are most important to you and hope that while you're fighting for the cure to cancer that someone else is fighting just as hard for clean air. No single one of us can fix everything and that often leads us to believe that the problems are too big for us to even look at. I know that if I throw away a plastic bottle rather than recycle it, it's not going to make or break the planet. I know that my vote may not decide who the next President is. That doesn't mean I should just throw my hands in the air and say that nothing I do matters because I'm such a small part of a larger world. I may not be able to fix the world's problems on my own, but when we stop trying and only care about ourselves then we've truly failed and given into the weight of the world.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
On Quality
There is a saying "If you're going to do something. Do it right", which can be immediately countered with "Never do your best work because they will come to expect it." Quality is an interesting concept. Not everything in the world can be great. In fact it seems as though there are a great many things that only serve as a measure of how good something else is. I was thinking about Fruit Stripe gum the other day and it got me wondering about the whole idea. Did the makers of that cheap gum simply not care that their product was substandard? Maybe they thought it was good enough and stopped at that. I guess either answer just shows that people have different standards on even the smallest things.
The thing is that no one always does their best work all the time. It's an impossible standard to maintain. Sure there will be times when you get it your all and really try to make sure that there is a special quality to whatever you've put your mind to. They say the character of a person is measured by what they do when no one is looking. I believe that most people out there are generally good and if not good then simply not looking to be overtly bad. With that said most of the time though people will do what they think they can get away with. Driving down the road we know what the speed limit is and yet we go over. We do this and justify it in our mind because don't the cops have better things to do than chase us down for going 5-10 mph over the limit? We continue this behavior because we know that most of the time we can get away with it. That's why a car pulled over by a cop car with flashing lights is the strongest deterrent to prevent speeding. That little warning that if you're not careful then maybe it'll be you on the side of the road while people drive by staring at your embarrassment. The effort we put into things tends to be very similar. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everyone out there is doing just the bare minimum, but let's be honest, if everyone put forth their best effort all the time this world may be a very different place.
What's strange about quality is that it's not always the best thing that's the most successful. Look at McDonald's or Starbucks or Coca Cola. Their products aren't superior to what's around them. They just happen to be very successful in being in the top of their class. One could argue about taste for those various companies, but a McDonald's hamburger isn't known for its great quality. While you may enjoy Starbucks coffee, there are several alternatives out there that could be labeled as "better" in price or overall taste. Somehow those companies have taken average products and skipped past quality and gone straight for quantity. They have saturated the market with whatever they're selling in hopes that no one else stands against them. There is a problem with that though. Without competition there is no need to become better. If everyone is already buying your hamburgers or sodas then why change anything for the better? Unfortunately in a lot of cases the only true form of competition comes from those who simply attempt to match the marketing blitz because that's what we as a society have shown we respond to. So it's hard to blame the large companies for glossing over their quality when we've shown that we don't really care one way or another. Sure we say that we what better quality, but the line to the drive-thru is always crowded.
Now I know that with today's modern family it's getting harder to simply take time for really anything. The world always feels like it's blasting forward and if you're not running at top speed you're not just going to get left behind, but you're going to get run over in the process. Mom and dad are both working and by the time they get home from a day in the world there may be very little energy left to do something like cook a full meal for the family. Instead it just becomes easier to pick up our phone and dial for someone to bring us something. Or we stop by that drive-thru on the way home because it's there. We don't always have time or the energy to be concerned with the quality of something. Sometimes we just have to take what's easiest and move on. It would be easy to judge someone when they do this, but we've all been there. We know that the path of least resistance isn't always the best path. There are more and more moments in life where we put away our standards because standing up for them just seems too exhausting.
Maybe part of the whole issue comes from the fact that we as a society have put so much emphasis on everything that eventually something is going to fall through the cracks. There comes a breaking point where we ourselves stop trying as hard as we used to. It could be that the world smacked us around or maybe it simply stopped recognizing the fact that we put forth extra effort. When we look around and see that putting in 100% will get you the same reward as someone who only put in 70% it gets to be disheartening and given enough time one will eventually throttle back. Then that 70% becomes the new standard until it too drops down from overwhelming apathy. So it becomes understandable for those large companies who are successful at putting out a massive amount of low quality goods. They wouldn't keep making money if our own standards were raised. I guess the question is though how do we raise our standards when sometimes it feels like success is measured by the fact that you simply survived to the weekend?
The thing is that no one always does their best work all the time. It's an impossible standard to maintain. Sure there will be times when you get it your all and really try to make sure that there is a special quality to whatever you've put your mind to. They say the character of a person is measured by what they do when no one is looking. I believe that most people out there are generally good and if not good then simply not looking to be overtly bad. With that said most of the time though people will do what they think they can get away with. Driving down the road we know what the speed limit is and yet we go over. We do this and justify it in our mind because don't the cops have better things to do than chase us down for going 5-10 mph over the limit? We continue this behavior because we know that most of the time we can get away with it. That's why a car pulled over by a cop car with flashing lights is the strongest deterrent to prevent speeding. That little warning that if you're not careful then maybe it'll be you on the side of the road while people drive by staring at your embarrassment. The effort we put into things tends to be very similar. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everyone out there is doing just the bare minimum, but let's be honest, if everyone put forth their best effort all the time this world may be a very different place.
What's strange about quality is that it's not always the best thing that's the most successful. Look at McDonald's or Starbucks or Coca Cola. Their products aren't superior to what's around them. They just happen to be very successful in being in the top of their class. One could argue about taste for those various companies, but a McDonald's hamburger isn't known for its great quality. While you may enjoy Starbucks coffee, there are several alternatives out there that could be labeled as "better" in price or overall taste. Somehow those companies have taken average products and skipped past quality and gone straight for quantity. They have saturated the market with whatever they're selling in hopes that no one else stands against them. There is a problem with that though. Without competition there is no need to become better. If everyone is already buying your hamburgers or sodas then why change anything for the better? Unfortunately in a lot of cases the only true form of competition comes from those who simply attempt to match the marketing blitz because that's what we as a society have shown we respond to. So it's hard to blame the large companies for glossing over their quality when we've shown that we don't really care one way or another. Sure we say that we what better quality, but the line to the drive-thru is always crowded.
Now I know that with today's modern family it's getting harder to simply take time for really anything. The world always feels like it's blasting forward and if you're not running at top speed you're not just going to get left behind, but you're going to get run over in the process. Mom and dad are both working and by the time they get home from a day in the world there may be very little energy left to do something like cook a full meal for the family. Instead it just becomes easier to pick up our phone and dial for someone to bring us something. Or we stop by that drive-thru on the way home because it's there. We don't always have time or the energy to be concerned with the quality of something. Sometimes we just have to take what's easiest and move on. It would be easy to judge someone when they do this, but we've all been there. We know that the path of least resistance isn't always the best path. There are more and more moments in life where we put away our standards because standing up for them just seems too exhausting.
Maybe part of the whole issue comes from the fact that we as a society have put so much emphasis on everything that eventually something is going to fall through the cracks. There comes a breaking point where we ourselves stop trying as hard as we used to. It could be that the world smacked us around or maybe it simply stopped recognizing the fact that we put forth extra effort. When we look around and see that putting in 100% will get you the same reward as someone who only put in 70% it gets to be disheartening and given enough time one will eventually throttle back. Then that 70% becomes the new standard until it too drops down from overwhelming apathy. So it becomes understandable for those large companies who are successful at putting out a massive amount of low quality goods. They wouldn't keep making money if our own standards were raised. I guess the question is though how do we raise our standards when sometimes it feels like success is measured by the fact that you simply survived to the weekend?
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
On Movies
I love movies. I love going to the theater to see some new story being told. I love sitting at home watching a familiar movie, knowing all the lines and what comes next and somehow still manage to be entertained. It's hard for me to remember a time when I didn't love movies, if such a time ever existed. My love for movies comes from a long time ago so let's go back to the beginning.
Going to the movies was kind of a special occasion. It also had to do with the fact that the town I lived in only had one theater and that theater only had two screens. So if you wanted to go to the movies then your choices were A or B. Today you can type your address into a website and it will not only tell you all the theaters within a hundred miles, but you can also see all their showtimes. Back then you looked in the newspaper and saw the showtimes for whatever you wanted to see. That was pretty much the only option. Now I can only remember seeing a few different movies at the theater while it had just the two screens. Also there wasn't any form of pre-show entertainment like there is now. You went in and found your seat and sat in a dimly lit theater staring at that golden curtain for what seemed like forever until the movie started.
One of my favorite parts was the previews that came on before the movie started. Today there are few surprises anymore with a movie's release. At least not for me. Unless you're living under a rock, it's hard to escape the barrage of information that's out there. There are already trailers for movies not slated to be released until winter of next year. In that year there will be multiple trailers, each one showing the same stuff, only edited slightly differently to make sure they have our attention. There will be behind the scenes pictures and interviews with the director and cast. While the movie won't exactly be old news by the time it comes out, the market will have been saturated. The marketing people hope that the hype will put us into a frenzy so that we don't mind dropping $10 for a movie ticket about giant robots or a talking dog. Anyway back then a movie preview was how most people got to see what was coming out. There weren't a dozen movie sites that spent their every waking moment trying to gather as much information as possible. So the preview would be something of a surprise because in most cases you didn't see it coming. In some cases the previews for upcoming movies were as exciting as the movie you paid to see.
I honestly don't remember what the first movie I saw in the theater was. I'd like to believe it was The Empire Strikes Back, but I would have been too young to remember any of that. I do remember though my father took me to see The Fox and the Hound. It's hard to remember what prompted the whole thing, but it was just my dad and me that went to see it. For a long time that movie was my favorite Disney movie simply for the fact that my dad took me to see it in the theater. Another one of those back then things. When a movie left the theater it went into some sort of limbo because you couldn't just add it to your Netflix queue or download a copy directly to your computer. Plus with Disney movies they had a tendency to put them in what they called the Vault. I watched that movie one time in probably twenty years so all I had was the memory. A couple years after that my mom and I were riding the bus home and she dropped the bomb that we would be going to see Return of the Jedi. I nearly went out of my mind with excitement and I remember chattering away about how great it was going to be all the way home. For some reason I was told to keep it quiet from my dad. More special torture from the parents. When the time came to actually see the movie I remember being hooked from the start. I really believed that Luke was in serious trouble when he was about to walk the plank. When he flipped over the bad guy and grabbed his lightsaber I think my brain short circuited a little bit. I would be hard pressed to tell you other significant memories from that year, but that time in the theater with my mom has stayed with me for nearly thirty years. Recently I made a point to go watch the live action GI Joe movie with my brother. I knew it would be awful. He knew it would be awful. We knew this and yet we paid ticket price because we wanted to sit in the theater together and revel in its awfulness. I couldn't tell you what the plot was, but I will remember staring at the screen and groaning at the sheer stupidity of it all and enjoying it because my brother was next to me.
For me many movies are a kind of marker for my memories. I remember going to see the live action Flintstones movies with friends in high school. The reason I remember that movie is because before leaving for the theater I had asked a girl that I liked if she wanted to come along. She could meet us there if she wanted and my friends and I headed out. Along the way we changed the movie time and went to a different showing. It didn't even occur to me that I was essentially standing her up. When we finally went on our first date I remember the movie we went to see and bought it on DVD because it reminds me of that moment in time.
Movies are all about imagination. Sure movies are made to make money and hopefully entertain, but if they had to choose, it seems like they'll go with the former rather than the latter. Not every movie can be Citizen Kane. When I was in high school I worked at the local video store and got to see just how many terrible movies were put out on a weekly basis. For a long time I wondered why this was allowed. Why spend millions of dollars on a movie that's going to wind up on the bottom shelf of Action/Adventure section? Then I realized that the people involved in those movies are just like us. They need to work. If you're working in your dream job then count yourself lucky. Most people are willing to accept whatever work helps pays the bills. If you're really fortunate you'll find a job that you can be passionate about. Most of the time though you accept the role in the movie Transmorphers 3: Revenge of the Changebots, just so you can say you're a working actor. They star in those movies in hopes that someone will notice them. It happened on the set of Leprechaun for one actress and she's gotten pretty famous since that terrible low budget movie. So while I still won't watch most of the movies that are released, I at least understand why they're being made.
Right now things are in kind of a transition period for movies. Much like what happened with music, it's becoming easier for people to get things directly rather than having to go out and find them. If you wanted to hear a new song by a band you liked, you listened to the radio or you bought their album. Sure someone could make a tape for you, but that was about it. These days you could ask ten people when they bought their last CD and a good portion of them would probably say they don't remember. That doesn't mean their music listening has gone down in anyway. They're just finding other ways to get to what they want without going the traditional route. Movies are starting to get into that realm as well. Today there are instant queues. There are movies being released to On-Demand services the same day they come out to theaters. Plus if you wanted you could go to your favorite torrent website and search for just about anything. Don't get me wrong, I like that we can watch trailers on our computers. We can get nearly anything on DVD. You don't even need to go to the theater anymore. You can watch everything on your computer, sometimes before it's even left the theater. For me though going to the theater is part of the experience. While I like watching a movie on my computer, it's not even close to the same feeling I get from going to the theater to see something for the first time. For me that's something I don't want to give up for the convenience of staying home.
Going to the movies was kind of a special occasion. It also had to do with the fact that the town I lived in only had one theater and that theater only had two screens. So if you wanted to go to the movies then your choices were A or B. Today you can type your address into a website and it will not only tell you all the theaters within a hundred miles, but you can also see all their showtimes. Back then you looked in the newspaper and saw the showtimes for whatever you wanted to see. That was pretty much the only option. Now I can only remember seeing a few different movies at the theater while it had just the two screens. Also there wasn't any form of pre-show entertainment like there is now. You went in and found your seat and sat in a dimly lit theater staring at that golden curtain for what seemed like forever until the movie started.
One of my favorite parts was the previews that came on before the movie started. Today there are few surprises anymore with a movie's release. At least not for me. Unless you're living under a rock, it's hard to escape the barrage of information that's out there. There are already trailers for movies not slated to be released until winter of next year. In that year there will be multiple trailers, each one showing the same stuff, only edited slightly differently to make sure they have our attention. There will be behind the scenes pictures and interviews with the director and cast. While the movie won't exactly be old news by the time it comes out, the market will have been saturated. The marketing people hope that the hype will put us into a frenzy so that we don't mind dropping $10 for a movie ticket about giant robots or a talking dog. Anyway back then a movie preview was how most people got to see what was coming out. There weren't a dozen movie sites that spent their every waking moment trying to gather as much information as possible. So the preview would be something of a surprise because in most cases you didn't see it coming. In some cases the previews for upcoming movies were as exciting as the movie you paid to see.
I honestly don't remember what the first movie I saw in the theater was. I'd like to believe it was The Empire Strikes Back, but I would have been too young to remember any of that. I do remember though my father took me to see The Fox and the Hound. It's hard to remember what prompted the whole thing, but it was just my dad and me that went to see it. For a long time that movie was my favorite Disney movie simply for the fact that my dad took me to see it in the theater. Another one of those back then things. When a movie left the theater it went into some sort of limbo because you couldn't just add it to your Netflix queue or download a copy directly to your computer. Plus with Disney movies they had a tendency to put them in what they called the Vault. I watched that movie one time in probably twenty years so all I had was the memory. A couple years after that my mom and I were riding the bus home and she dropped the bomb that we would be going to see Return of the Jedi. I nearly went out of my mind with excitement and I remember chattering away about how great it was going to be all the way home. For some reason I was told to keep it quiet from my dad. More special torture from the parents. When the time came to actually see the movie I remember being hooked from the start. I really believed that Luke was in serious trouble when he was about to walk the plank. When he flipped over the bad guy and grabbed his lightsaber I think my brain short circuited a little bit. I would be hard pressed to tell you other significant memories from that year, but that time in the theater with my mom has stayed with me for nearly thirty years. Recently I made a point to go watch the live action GI Joe movie with my brother. I knew it would be awful. He knew it would be awful. We knew this and yet we paid ticket price because we wanted to sit in the theater together and revel in its awfulness. I couldn't tell you what the plot was, but I will remember staring at the screen and groaning at the sheer stupidity of it all and enjoying it because my brother was next to me.
For me many movies are a kind of marker for my memories. I remember going to see the live action Flintstones movies with friends in high school. The reason I remember that movie is because before leaving for the theater I had asked a girl that I liked if she wanted to come along. She could meet us there if she wanted and my friends and I headed out. Along the way we changed the movie time and went to a different showing. It didn't even occur to me that I was essentially standing her up. When we finally went on our first date I remember the movie we went to see and bought it on DVD because it reminds me of that moment in time.
Movies are all about imagination. Sure movies are made to make money and hopefully entertain, but if they had to choose, it seems like they'll go with the former rather than the latter. Not every movie can be Citizen Kane. When I was in high school I worked at the local video store and got to see just how many terrible movies were put out on a weekly basis. For a long time I wondered why this was allowed. Why spend millions of dollars on a movie that's going to wind up on the bottom shelf of Action/Adventure section? Then I realized that the people involved in those movies are just like us. They need to work. If you're working in your dream job then count yourself lucky. Most people are willing to accept whatever work helps pays the bills. If you're really fortunate you'll find a job that you can be passionate about. Most of the time though you accept the role in the movie Transmorphers 3: Revenge of the Changebots, just so you can say you're a working actor. They star in those movies in hopes that someone will notice them. It happened on the set of Leprechaun for one actress and she's gotten pretty famous since that terrible low budget movie. So while I still won't watch most of the movies that are released, I at least understand why they're being made.
Right now things are in kind of a transition period for movies. Much like what happened with music, it's becoming easier for people to get things directly rather than having to go out and find them. If you wanted to hear a new song by a band you liked, you listened to the radio or you bought their album. Sure someone could make a tape for you, but that was about it. These days you could ask ten people when they bought their last CD and a good portion of them would probably say they don't remember. That doesn't mean their music listening has gone down in anyway. They're just finding other ways to get to what they want without going the traditional route. Movies are starting to get into that realm as well. Today there are instant queues. There are movies being released to On-Demand services the same day they come out to theaters. Plus if you wanted you could go to your favorite torrent website and search for just about anything. Don't get me wrong, I like that we can watch trailers on our computers. We can get nearly anything on DVD. You don't even need to go to the theater anymore. You can watch everything on your computer, sometimes before it's even left the theater. For me though going to the theater is part of the experience. While I like watching a movie on my computer, it's not even close to the same feeling I get from going to the theater to see something for the first time. For me that's something I don't want to give up for the convenience of staying home.
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