Things Forgotten, and Things Remembered

It's easy to forget things. People do it all the time. They lose their car keys or their slippers, and they forget their anniversaries or friends' birthdays. It's a commonplace occurrence. We also all forget who we are on a fairly regular basis. This has to be true, as otherwise how could so many awful things be done, if not by people who've forgotten who they are? It may sound like a nonsensical piece of gibberish, but it has a meaning. I'm always forgetting that - please move some things to make space for the gigantic ego, please - I'm actually pretty good at maths and a nice, gentle person. This self-knowledge just leaves for no apparent reason, and with it a large portion of self-esteem wanders into the woods for a five mile hike, hopefully not to be eaten by a bear or a ravenous hermit. Good grief, on a good day, I'm even a decent writer! What might it mean for other people to forget more important things about themselves, and lose their own identities in the process?

One of the greatest perils of modern life is that no-one has any time to think any more, unless they consciously make the time. Maybe no-one ever thought in the old days, either, and this is just a modern myth, this idea that we're constantly connected and never alone. If it's a myth, it's one that feels pretty real. The Internet, for all its advantages, does have disadvantages. Everything has disadvantages. All bathroom things, for example, seem designed to fall over and be constantly unstable. Peeling oranges can make your fingernails yellow. Microwaves spit out gamma radiation. Good things come to an end. Letters take a long time to reach their destination. The Internet's great disadvantage, this week, is that under its constant bombardment of current information we lose touch with some of our constant self-knowledge. Knowledge and information are not the same things, after all. Reading a book is far better for your own stability and self-awareness than reading a forum or a terrible blog post.

(Go read books, you terrible blog readers!)

It's strange to remember that, for example, you're good at things, especially after a long period of time. Relearning large swathes of mathematics to tutor someone else is like uncovering a treasure trove of self-confidence after having it beaten out by the rigours of a doctorate. Egads, there was a time when I was top of the class, and not just a humble code jockey, punching programs into a computer. How odd it all seems. There were different times, and those experiences aren't invalidated by what happened later. Both eras are equally true. For a supposedly intelligent species, we don't seem to use our ability to hold mutually contradictory ideas simultaneously much, do we? There wouldn't be religious wars, if we could.

It's also good to remember to be happy. Tomorrow, or Tuesday, I'll write about 'The Electric Horseman', a film of which I had never heard, but which turned out to be lovely on today's viewing. It's nice to feel happy. One of the great powers of books, television, classical music and film is that ability to unleash the emotions and thoughts that remain dormant within all of us far too much of the time. Hey, who has time to be happy when there's this pile of work to be done, a commute home still to take, and a pile of laundry waiting to be folded after dinner? Who has time to feel anything? Too many people don't even have the time to sleep, let alone think or feel. It's a wonder that people don't forget their own names and addresses!

Yes, things get forgotten, and sometimes they're very important things. We can only hope that they are only mislaid and not lost forever.

O.

Television: 'Parks and Recreation: One Last Ride' and 'The Mentalist: Brown Shag Carpet / White Orchids' (The Finales)

Grand series finales are tremendously difficult things to pull off successfully. Of all the television shows I've seen, I can only really think of 'All Good Things...' (from 'Star Trek: The Next Generation') as an example of a finale that excels and in which a whole series successfully culminates. There are examples of finales that work, but don't excel, as in 'Frasier', 'Cheers', 'Magnum PI' and examples of those that don't, for which 'Quantum Leap' is surely a suitably awkward poster boy, along with 'MASH' and 'The Prisoner'. So few series survive long enough to get a finale, that any experience of making one must be incredibly limited.

Where do the finales for 'Parks and Recreation' and 'The Mentalist' fall in this tiny spectrum, then? Unavoidably, they end up being awkward, and bearing the burden of being lesser than the penultimate instalments of the shows. This happens a lot.

'One Last Ride' sets out to be a distillation of the characters' future instead of the series' humour, and finally ends by reducing everyone's fates to predictable or mundane versions of what might have been. Ultimately, it is my own axe to grind, but why reduce every character to making the same life choices? Why not have some people be different? These are characters that have lived their screen lives being different! Oh, that's not fair. Becoming governor of Indiana is not mundane, but it is predictable for Leslie Knope, and Garry being a good mayor was a surprise. Actually, it wasn't a surprise, the man is a born diplomat. The preceding episode, where Garry was chosen as interim mayor, was for me the true finale. It seemed like a natural ending, and that 'One Last Ride' was a postscript of little interest. C'est la vie. We all choose our own natural episodes to finish on. Overall, it's a solid hour, but one that feels very jumpy and disconnected.

What about 'The Mentalist'? This show fared a little better, even while being in the same situation of being given a surprise extra half season to wrap up a show that had already been given an emergency finale at the end of the previous season, one of many impromptu finales given throughout the run of the show. The last two half seasons of 'The Mentalist' were very curious things, coming as an epilogue to the end of the main arc, and leaving us without the drive that Patrick Jane's quest for vengeance had previously provided. Instead, we got no replacement arc except for the long delayed romance between the two lead characters, Jane's adaptation to regular existence, and a sense of languidness and tranquility. However, it was nice tranquility, and perhaps the correct way to go. A wedding, a serial killer taken care of with ease, and no real danger. Was it good? Well, it failed on the grounds of not representing the series as a whole, and succeeded in tying up loose ends and leaving strands for the future. Every finale should leave a sense that the story continues past what we see of it, at least in my idealised version of narrative fiction. Every story should begin and finish 'en media res', in some way.

Neither of these finales truly feels 'right', or like a true and surpassing symbol of their series as a whole. 'Brown Shag Carpet / White Orchids' does work a lot better than the other, even if it does feel a little too slight. As said previously, these finale episodes are really difficult to make. Getting to a level of coherence when you have to end everything is a miracle in itself.

Goodbye, 'Parks and Recreation' and 'The Mentalist'. You were my last running current television series. What will happen now? Oooh, some books! Excellent...

O.

How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love ACME

There is one Looney Tunes character who transcends all others, in my own personal Hall of Fame. It's not Bugs Bunny, despite all his fame and popularity, not is it my own second favourite Daffy Duck, whose sheer persistence and endurance make him a role model for all who may lose their way in the labyrinthine pasta trails of life. No, they are eclipsed by the one, the only, the magnificent Wile E Coyote.

The Roadrunner cartoons have almost nothing to do with the Roadrunner. They're really all about the Coyote, that manic genius who is pushed ever onwards in his quest to catch the nefarious bird, at the cost of massive expense and reason. Indeed, if he used any of his apparently vast fortune to buy food instead of equipment from ACME, the canny carnivore would never be hungry again. Why doesn't he? What's the motivation there? Why is he so eager to catch the Roadrunner? Why so many gadgets? Who are ACME, really?

The Coyote is not driven by hunger, despite the frequent pangs evident in the shorts, no his real motivation is his own twisty obsession, born from years of frustration. The Coyote must persist, because if he surrenders, then he will have been defeated by the universe itself, which manifests itself via the Coyote's endless bad luck and the apparently mindless bird. It's not even clear that the Coyote is a bad guy. Isn't he really just someone driven by his own basic needs, which have become distorted over time? In his early days of seeking sustenance you might consider him the heavy, but as the shorts roll on and the sheer indignities imposed by the Roadrunner accumulate he becomes the king of the underdogs, and we are programmed to love underdogs.

Yes, Wile E Coyote is the best of the Looney Tunes, an urbane madman with a dedication that surpasses all common sense, and the star character of one of the greatest cartoon series ever. No-other character gained from repetition in quite the same way. Take it away, Wile E, you're our hero. You'll get that bird one day.

O.

Untitled Melange of Nonsenses

Okay, it's the first post after a break, and the last thing written was about being published? Good grief, when did that happen? It must be a clerical error, a compilation of all the conspiratorial obstacles that were pushed up against its ever happening, including one of the authors' names still being wrong on the first online offprints. The sheer number of things that get un-fixed after final submission is astounding. Beware the typesetting process, people out there who might be considering getting published in the future, beware.

Coming back from a break is usually a very refreshing experience. There's something liberating about getting out and about in a place where no-one knows you, where you don't get compared or sometimes forced into some already established persona that everyone expects. It's nice to spend time with friends, or play five games of pool solitaire in the diversions centre, or even spin on the spot for no reason. These are all good things. Oh, society, you really must stop programming people to conform at all costs. It's not healthy, and you're only making future money for therapists and chocolate ice cream makers. Anyway, breaking those patterns is wonderful, especially if you can carry the refreshing new flexibility over into the life that waits back in the gloom of routine.

In alternate news, Film Bin is closed down. We made two hundred and six total postings, including a few announcements, and that's not bad. It never really turned out to be quite what I wanted at the outset, and sometimes just ended up being about wallpaper and people's hair, but it was a good thing to try and sets a good pattern for improvement in the future. So, thanks go out to the Film Bin Crew for a fine job done. Now it's time to refocus on the ultimate challenge of writing about things at very little notice and with almost no plan, here on the Quirky Muffin.

Ah, the Muffin, that grand undefined project, that internal challenge to write and keep on writing, and somehow allow self expression without dropping into maudlin sentimentality and ludicrous personal detail.

O.

Suspended for Fun

The Quirky Muffin is suspended until the middle of next week due to holidays. Seek ye your nonsense elsewhere...

Published

It should feel better to be published, finally. It should feel different. Why does it feel like nothing at all? It's actually very similar to the grand anti-climax of finishing both degrees and the HND, if a doctorate can ever be said to finish. I think those moments after that last undergraduate exam will haunt me forever: that walk to outside the Sports Cage, that realisation that it was all over with no hullaballoo of any kind, and that aimless stroll back to pack up the stuff for moving out. Such is the matter that life is made of, and none of it is the coffee creme.

Surely, there must be some satisfaction in finishing something sometime?! Am I just utterly inured to all joy, thanks to the constant strings of disasters that come sliding down the hillside of experience? Such cynicism does tend to ruin enjoyment of things, even when you are successfully juggling two students, a proofreading job and a couple of research projects. Perhaps 'successfully' is too strong a word. Some of those things are on 'dead stop' at this time! Who can really juggle so many things! It's wonderful that there are friends and correspondents to stop me going crazy...

Oh, that's one assumption made. Madness, madness!

It's odd, then, given this pervasive sense of anti-climax, that anything ever gets done at all. How on Earth are things ever enjoyed? There must be a clerical error somewhere because watching 'Legal Eagles' recently was lovely, and the final seasons of 'The Mentalist' and 'Parks and Recreation' are fascinating and enjoyable for their sheer audacity in deviating from their respective formulae. Oh, 'Legal Eagles', one day you'll get a post of your own. One day! 'One Hit Wonderland' by Tony Hawks is still great, and Darwin's 'Voyage of the Beagle' is fascinating.

Perhaps this has all be an accident waiting for happen? Perhaps the final result of this post is an anti-climax? Yes, sometimes life does resemble meaningless words scrawled on a page.

O.

Book: 'The Most of SJ Perelman' by S.J. Perelman (1958)

It's fascinating how so much literature falls through the holes in the net of history. You would think that the prose of Woody Allen, 'The Ascent of Rum Doodle' by Bowman, and 'Three Men In A Boat' by Jerome would live immortally in the minds of all who read, but in actuality they just drift into the hands of the select few who seek out such things, the bunch who read about what to read: The hard core. What a wacky world this is that you have to actively find out about Rum Doodle! SJ Perelman doesn't quite fit into that golden cohort but he does come close, if this collection is at all representative. Perelman was a literary antecedent of Woody Allen, a prolific creator of short humorous stories, and someone so articulate and erudite that you can't help but salute him even as he makes his written somersaults through the rubber rings of humour.

More than Woody, Perelman was a satirist, but one with a palpable sense of 'heart', that quality which permeates the best of most media. What does it mean to have 'heart'? It would be a three hour essay, but for now let us say it an absence of cynicism and a commitment to the thing being made that demands quality beyond itself, with a healthy dose of humour thrown in. Or, less incoherently, a deep sense of caring somewhere in the making. Perelman had that in his writing, in a dog-eared and mock-cynical way. Did the man have it himself? It's hard to say, and reports are contradictory, but it's a shame his work never jumped to my attention before. It's fascinating. 'Fascinating' is a funny word to use for a humorist, isn't it? Does it mean something?

A lot of 'The Most' is filled with references that no-one has seen made for more than fifty years, and as such might fall upon stoney ground. The writing is wonderful, though, and rich with a quality of prose that would make many modern authors green with envy. Ultimately your enjoyment will be based on your level of historical awareness, and your ability to appreciate things in their own context, which two things are sometimes very rare indeed. Due to immense training and a willingness to jump into the grand historical archive, it's not wasted at all on this ground, and is at times highly amusing indeed.

'The Most' collects from many periods of Perelman's career, including the highly notable 'Cloudland' articles, wherein he revisited various old movies and books from his youth and recounted his newer reactions in rigorous anecdotal form. The whole collection is amusing, but the 'Cloudland' episodes are the ones that stick in the mind, although not as forcefully as the highpoints of Woody in his own scribblings. It's a shame, but as much as I like Perelman, for his wittiness and intelligence, he doesn't hit the peaks or the lows of Woody Allen. Perelman is a far more reliable beast, and one with a thousand stories to tell, most of them untrue. The average is high, higher than you'll find with many other writers of short prose. It's also highly chauvinistic at times, as it would be from that time period.

Ultimately, somehow it's not quite recommendable. Not quite. Seek ye 'Rum Doodle' instead.

O.