On Sunday I went to a lecture by Jonathan Kirsch, author of the new book A History of the End of the World. His lecture focused on the book of Revelations, and on the many ill-fated attempts to use the book to predict a date for the apocalypse. The lecture was hosted by the CFI (Center For Inquiry) center in Hollywood, an organization that tries to inject a rational/skeptical voice in public affairs. They also host a popular podcast, which features a lot of big name guests.

Some of the most interesting guests I’ve heard have been the stage magicians. Magicians have a long tradition of being skeptics and debunkers (most famously Houdini). Magicians, who deceive people for a living, are particularly astute at seeing through the deceptions of others. (As an aside, one point the magicians make that I thought was interesting is that it’s often easier to fool smart people with magic tricks. One reason is that smart people may be too sure of themselves. The other is that smart people are better at seeing patterns and anticipating what’ll happen next. It’s exactly these sorts of expectations that magicians exploit, since people are likely to see whatever they’re expecting to see.)

I see some similarities here between magicians and fantasy & science fiction writers. Just as magicians are less likely to be taken in by magic tricks, I think fantasy & science fiction writers are less likely to be taken in by fanciful tales. I sometimes meet people who assume that since I’m interested in science fiction I must be obsessed with alien abductions and similar topics. I’m not. My modest expertise in stories about aliens and what it takes to write such stories makes me much less easily impressed when a second-rate imitation comes along. I mean come on, can you imagine if you went before Congress and asked for hundreds of billions of dollars to fund an interstellar expedition for the sole purpose of surreptitiously anal probing a few intelligent lifeforms? Where’s the logic?

Last night I went to see the new play The Beastly Bombing, a hilarious and savage burlesque of contemporary politics. The plot concerns two pairs of terrorists — white supremacists and Islamic fundamentalists — who meet while both attempting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. They eventually find themselves sharing a jail cell with the president’s coked-out daughters, and love blossoms. The show was sold out and received a standing ovation. It’s definitely worth seeing, as long as you’re not easily offended.

By now you’ve all probably heard that Ted Haggard, one of the nation’s leading evangelicals and an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, has been engaged in a three-year-long binge of meth-fueled gay sex with a prostitute. As soon as I saw his photo, I was like, “Wait a minute, I know this nitwit from somewhere.” Turns out he’s the same guy who totally lost it during an interview with Richard Dawkins. Haggard chased Dawkins off the church property while screaming, “You called my children animals!” (In reference to Dawkins’ advocacy of evolution.)

Speaking of evolution, have you heard about Kirk Cameron and the banana? This is apparently not a joke. If not, it’s one of the most unintentionally funny things I’ve seen in a long time. It turns out that the banana is proof of design in the universe. “As with soda can makers, they’ve placed a tab at the top … when you pull the tab, the contents don’t squirt in your face.” It’s impossible to watch this video without concluding that this guy’s mind is on something besides bananas. (“Ease of entry … just the right shape for the human mouth.”) As one YouTube poster piquantly observed, “Why does this guy seem to expect that any banana-shaped object is naturally going to squirt in your face?” Among the many, many flaws of the banana argument is the fact that bananas as we know them are the result of thousands of years of cultivation. Wild bananas are practically inedible.

(This entire entry is about Transformers, and nothing else. You have been warned.)

At the 2-9 cafe this week, the conversation turned to the upcoming live action Transformers movie, and then naturally to the classic 80s cartoon series. One of my friends mentioned that he owned a copy of the old 1986 Transformers feature film, the one that traumatized an entire generation of American boys by depicting beloved Transformers characters — lots of them, in fact — being brutally gunned down. (Nobody ever died in the TV series.) My friend said it actually holds up pretty well, and I was curious, so I borrowed it from him and re-watched it last night.

It was a strange experience. When you’re talking about Transformers, you’re getting awfully close to my very earliest childhood memories. It’s not often that impressions from when you were five years old rise to the surface. One thing that really hit me was the sense of menace and alieness that the evil transformers used to inspire in me. (It’s almost the same feeling I sometimes get now from reading Lovecraft.) I mean, it’s not that I did believe that the world was full of planes and consumer items that might suddenly, horrifyingly reveal themselves to be gigantic alien robots, but the possibilty was very palpable. Hearing Shockwave’s muffled, reverberant voice for the first time in years actually gave me shivers.

I remember my dad never showed much interest in watching the cartoon, but I got him to sit through the feature film once by promising that it was like a real adult movie with an amazing storyline. When it was over, he allowed that it was better than the TV show. Watching the movie now, I’m amazed he managed to endure it, since 98% of the screen time is just cartoon robots blasting/smashing each other, and all the dialogue is pretty awful. Though the movie does contain some visuals that still awe me. You have to give the writers credit for not thinking small.

At the movie’s climax, the hero, Hot Rod, is transformed into Rodimus Prime, an even more expensive toy … sorry, I mean an even more powerful robot. I remember my dad was confused by this, and I thought he was dense, but it really does make absolutely no sense. The weird thing is, I can vividly remember feeling as a kid that it made sense, but now I don’t remember why.

Transformers featured five characters called constructicons, each of whom could be a robot or a piece of construction equipment, but who could also combine into one even more gigantic robot. I remember this prospect used to thrill me more than anything on earth. Unfortunately, I only ever got my hands on two of the constructicons, and, maddeningly, they weren’t even two who fit together in any way. (I think one was the right arm, and the other was the left leg, or something like that.) I once read a Neil Gaiman quote to the effect that he spoils his kids because he remembers how exciting it was to get toys as a kid, and that if he can buy that much human happiness for a few lousy bucks it’s worth it. I hear that. These days my capacity for thrills is much diminished. I could get married, win the lottery, and get a ten-book contract all on the same day, and that would be awesome, but still not as exciting as getting all the constructicons when I was five.

I also remember how Transformers transformed me into a young death penalty advocate. Every week the hero, Optimus Prime, would subdue the villain, Megatron, only to pronounce that being a real hero meant showing mercy, to which Megatron would chuckle under his breath, “Ha! Only fools show mercy. Mercy is for the week. You can bet I’ll be back to get you next week, Optimus Prime, bwahahahaha!” and I’d be waving my fists and screaming, “No, you idiot! Don’t you ever learn? Kill him! KILL HIM NOW!” I’m not sure if that’s the message the show intended, but it’s certainly what I took away from it. It’s a little scary how much a cartoon like that can influence your worldview when you’re a kid.

Last week I saw a movie with my friend Adam at the fancy Arclight theater on Sunset. As we were filing out afterward, an employee apologized for the fire alarm and handed us free tickets to see another movie. We hadn’t noticed any alarm, but we shrugged and took the tickets. Yesterday we used them to see The Prestige. (I found it riveting, though it’s only for people who like their movies grim and extremely complicated.) Toward the end of the movie, Adam joked, “Excuse me while I go pull the fire alarm.”

Last night my writing program hosted a Halloween reading at the Fischer art gallery at USC. Tracy did a really nice job getting everything set up — there was wine, cheese & crackers, and chocolate laid out on a table in the courtyard, and the seats in the gallery were draped with cobwebs. I kicked things off by reading my Harry Potter poem and a short-short about an escaped prisoner who finds himself chained to a corpse. It’s hard to create a scary atmosphere in just two pages (which was the limit for this event), so most readers elected to do funny rather than scary. The funniest was Andy’s “The Cock-Blocking Ghost,” about a young man who finds himself living in an apartment haunted by the vengeful spirit of a male virgin. This ghost stymies all the narrator’s attempts to get laid, frightening away girls by moaning things like, “Gonnnorrrheeeaaa.”

The fun got a little out of hand at the 29 Cafe last night. The word “douchenozzle” was introduced to our collective lexicon, despite no one really being sure what it might mean. One of my classmates expressed her fervent desire to co-star with me in a porn film. And of course there was the soon-to-be-infamous, can’t-kill-it “half monkey” conversation, which had me laughing so hard I thought I was going to rupture something. (“You know what the problem was with Twelve Monkeys?” “What?” “It wasn’t Twelve and a half Monkeys.”) I can’t even explain it. One of my classmates also related an anecdote where he told his class that he didn’t have a car. His professor joked, “What, did you get drunk and crash it?” Awkward silence. Then, “Um … actually, yeah. That’s exactly what happened.” Professor: “Um … oh.”

To balance that out, I woke up this morning to discover that some dipshit in Mexico somehow charged thousands of dollars to my credit card yesterday. Argh.

Last night James B. Harris came to speak about his role as producer of the 1962 Kubrick adaptation of Lolita. At the time, all films had to get a stamp of approval from the Catholic church’s “Legion of Decency,” so Harris had to go and screen Lolita for the group. At one point, one of the decency guys said, offended, “It seems that Humbert is staring at the photo of Lolita on the dresser and using it as an aphrodisiac so he can make love to Charlotte.” Harris gave the guy a sidelong glance and was like, “Whoa, I don’t know where you’re getting that from,” with the implication like, Man, are you one sick bastard. The guy, embarrassed, let it drop. But of course, that’s exactly what was going on. Harris says, “I should’ve gotten the Oscar for Best Actor for that.”

He also talked a bit about Dr. Strangelove. He and Kubrick had worked out the story as a straight suspense/thriller. Then Harris left to direct his own projects. Kubrick called him up one night and was like, “I had an idea. I want to do it as a comedy.” Harris thought he was crazy. The financiers thought Kubrick was crazy too, and pulled out. But Kubrick was adamant, and got it made as a comedy.

Harris also talked about getting started as a producer. The most important thing, he said, is to make sure you and your friends have rich parents.

This weekend someone was killed in broad daylight in a drive-by shooting a few blocks from my apartment. I used to walk past that intersection twice every day on my way to and from the grocery store. Now I drive, because of shit like this.

Saw the new Sofia Coppola Marie Antoinette movie, which has fabulously lush visuals and a killer soundtrack. It’s light on plot, and will probably try the patience of most moviegoers, but I can’t stop thinking about it. It tells the story of Marie Antoinette using the vocabulary of a contemporary teen girl flick, a la Mean Girls, to make the point that Marie Antoinette was not a monster of self-indulgence and callousness, as history would have her, but basically just like your average American — focused on her own petty squabbles and personal problems, allaying her boredom and sadness through consumerism, ignorant and apathetic about politics. The political situation in France is almost totally ignored, but this is eerily effective at capturing the insular, out-of-touch nature of the French Court. I’d even see the movie again, but then I’m a sucker for historical dramas.

Another movie I just watched that I really got a kick out of was the documentary Frazetta: Painting with Fire. If you have any affection for Sword & Sorcery type stuff, it’s definitely worth checking out.

The other day I went to Subway. As I parked, I noticed that the guy getting out of the car next to me was holding a bag of Subway sandwiches. It occurred to me that it was somewhat strange for someone already in possession of a bag of Subway sandwiches to be going to Subway. I followed him into the store and stood behind him in line. He said something to the employees. All I caught was the word “blood.” Finally, unable to contain my curiosity, I asked him, “What happened with your sandwiches?” He explained that his girlfriend had gone over there to buy sandwiches, and while they were being made the employee had sliced a finger, bleeding all over the food preparation area. The girlfriend didn’t know what to say, but by the time she got home she’d decided that she didn’t want to eat the sandwiches. I said, “So she sent you to go return them?” And he said, “Yeah, she was too embarrassed to come back.”

Then walking around campus the other night, I noticed that one of the security vehicles had stopped and was shining its floodlight up into one of the enormous tropical trees outside the student center. Then I saw that a student had climbed WAY up into the tree, probably twenty feet off the pavement. A female friend of his was standing nearby, being suitably impressed and/or horrified by the guy’s climbing abilities. The security guys got out of their vehicle and told the student to come down, which he did. They looked over his ID, gave him a lecture, and drove off. I was reminded of a time when I was a freshman and got caught by campus security late at night after I had scaled a fence to get into a construction site to retrieve my frisbee. Ah, fun times. I was also pleasantly reminded of Roger Zelazny’s character Fred Cassidy, the rooftop-climbing perpetual undergrad from Doorways in the Sand.

So on Saturday I was doing my daily walk around campus and found myself amidst the throngs exiting the football stadium. One guy came up to me and said, “Excuse me, sir?” I stopped and eyed him. He looked sane and wasn’t particularly dirty or unkempt. (At least, no more so than your average football fan.) He said, “I’m having a really bad day. I just realized I don’t have enough to pay for the bus home. I’m short … $2.70. Do you think you could … ?” Without thinking I said, “Sure,” and gave him three bucks. Almost instantly I realized it was probably a scam, but whatever. I think I was just relieved that he wasn’t going to try to talk to me about football.

Then today I was doing my walk, and the exact same guy came up to me and used the exact same line. I said, “I just gave you money on Saturday,” and he was like, “Oh, you did?” and slunk off. I wasn’t even really bothered that he’d suckered me, but I was really insulted that he didn’t remember me. I mean, I gave him three bucks. You’d think that would buy me at least three days of recognition. The sad thing is, if he’d come up to me today and been like, “Excuse me, sir? Aren’t you that charming young man who gave me three dollars the other day? Do you think you could help me out again? I’m having a really bad day, and I just realized I don’t have enough to pay for more crack,” I probably would have been like, “Well … okay! Hey, you remembered me!”

A few weeks ago I went to a screening of a documentary about cosmetic surgery. One of the people they interviewed was a plastic surgeon, Mr. Marquardt. He’s produced a mask that he believes represents the “ideal” human face, based on various permutations of the “golden ratio” (1:1.618). He claims that this mask fits anyone from any race in any time and place who is or was considered to be exceptionally beautiful. His theory is basically that human beings recognize each other visually, using a hard-wired blueprint of what a human face is “supposed” to look like. The closer someone conforms to this blueprint, the more “humaness” our brain automatically ascribes to them. (Evidence for this includes the fact that even infants respond positively to pretty faces and negatively to ugly ones.)

I find this theory fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. In subsequent group discussions of the film, most people just seemed to find it horrifying. There was much animated condemnation of Mr. Marquardt for promoting this monolithic, reductionist, conformist view of beauty, rather than recognizing that beauty comes from within, that there’s something beautiful about everyone, that beauty is truth and truth beauty, etc., etc. I found this reflexive rebuttal overly facile. What really scares me isn’t the idea that Mr. Marquardt is promoting this monolithic, reductionist, conformist view of beauty and that he’s an idiot, but that he’s promoting this monolithic, reductionist, conformist view of beauty and that maybe he’s right. (In the film, Mr. Marquardt comes across as extremely obnoxious, so it’s hard to say how much of the negative reaction was colored by people’s response to his personality.)

Speaking of beauty, I thought this video was pretty striking. It reminds me of a study I just read, which found that people are so deluged by images of artificially attractive faces that no one in this particular survey rated any of the 150 actual, existing, makeup-less faces any higher than “average.” Only computer-manipulated faces received rankings of “rather attractive” or “very attractive.”

A few years ago I saw a startling demonstration of some of the techniques from a medieval sword fighting manual. The techniques were brutal and dirty, and made a sword fight look less like a fencing match and more like a back-alley knife fight. I’ve been trying to find video of this for a while, and finally stumbled across this video [dead link] on YouTube. The guys are going pretty slow, but I think you can imagine how ugly the real thing would be.

Yesterday I went to Venice Beach and then ate at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. You’re only allowed to park there for 3 hours, and my time was almost up, so I paid for my food and told my friends (who I’d given a ride) that I was going to hurry back and make sure I didn’t get a ticket. They were supposed to get the bill, pay it, and join me. I walked back to the parking garage and … couldn’t find my car. I was sure I had parked on level 3, but I couldn’t find it. I tried level 2. Nothing. I tried level 4. Nothing. I tried 3 again. Nope. I tried 2 again. Etc. The garage is composed entirely of ramps slanting every which way and is very confusing. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty, and I still couldn’t find my car. I wondered if it’d been towed or stolen. I wondered where my friends were. (I didn’t have my cell phone with me.) Finally, I went up to level 6 and jogged around and around in a corkscrew pattern all the way down to level 1, passing every single car in the garage. Mine wasn’t among them. There was an attendant by the entrance, so I explained my situation. I was obviously not the first person to have this problem, and she explained boredly that there are two completely separate, completely identical parking garages on either side of the building, and that my car was probably in the other one. I walked through the mall and came out in the other parking garage. Almost instantly I spotted my friends, who’d been waiting by my car for twenty minutes. They were like, “Oh, we were getting worried about you.”

Tonight I went to a screening of An Inconvenient Truth. Before the film, a young man gave a presentation about how global warming is destroying his homeland, a small island in the Pacific. The rising sea level is contaminating the ground water and killing off the coastal trees that his people depend on for food, medicine, and building materials. Rising ocean temperatures are wiping out the coral reefs. Without the reefs, there are no fish to eat. It’s not clear how much longer the island will be inhabitable, but the people there are too poor to move. It was very sad.

Carol Pinchefsky’s article “Introducing Readers to the Genre” is up at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. In this piece she attempts to find readers who don’t normally read fantasy or science fiction, get them to read something, and then gauge their reactions. One story she used was my “The Black Bird.”

Tonight I went to a screening of Pirates of the Caribbean that featured a Q&A afterword with co-writer Ted Elliott. He and his writing partner had pitched the idea of doing a PotC movie to Disney back in ’92 and been turned down. Ten years later, after a change of leadership at Disney, an exec called him up and, knowing nothing of his earlier pitch, said Disney was thinking about doing a PotC movie and would he be interested. He leapt at the chance. Having done Shrek, he was interested in doing more movies that drew on material that was already a part of the audience’s mental vocabulary. Everyone’s familiar with the idea of ghost pirates and cursed treasure, but there haven’t been any big movies about them in recent memory. In fact, there hadn’t been a successful pirate movie in about 50 years. (The most recent big attempt being the ill-fated Cutthroat Island. Its major flaw, according to Elliott, is that it’s an action movie with pirates rather than a pirate movie.) Disney already had a PotC script in development that had no supernatural elements. Elliott and his partner took some characters and elements from that script and added the ghost pirates. A few weeks ago in my screenwriting class, my professor was talking about PotC and said, “What makes that movie work is Jack Sparrow. Without him, there’s just no movie. If I were to pitch it, I’d say, ‘It’s a pirate movie with Bugs Bunny as the main character.'” I thought that was interesting, and thought about asking Elliott for his take on that, but he beat me to it, saying, “Jack Sparrow is a Trickster character. Trickster characters are more common in other cultures, less so in western cultures, though there are a few — like Bugs Bunny.” Someone asked how much of Jack Sparrow’s screwball persona was in the script. Elliott said that’s why you cast a great actor like Johnny Depp — he brings a whole other intepretation to the character that you could’ve never imagined. In the case of PotC, what Depp really seized on was Jack Sparrow’s line, “But you have heard of me,” and started conceiving the character as a sort of pirate rock star.