Breakfast with Pandora

Red Tails and heroism

Apparently it is not politically correct or film-savvy to like "Red Tails," the latest film about the barrier-busting World War II African-American fighter pilots who came from Tuskeegee Institute in Alabama and proved to the world that "courage has no color."

"Red Tails" is not going to be a critic's darling. It is a Hollywood movie that hearkens back to a day when war films did not show soldiers getting blown to bits. It pays homage to a period of history and a certain group of men. It is deliberately a history lesson, and yet it is also an action film.

Movie poster found here.

So there will be a lot of folk who blame it for not being what they want it to be.

But all that doesn't really matter. What matters (at least to me) is that stepson, who is 13, an airplane technology expert, and as cynical and world-weary about movies as a person his age can be, gave it two thumbs up.

Stepson was not interested in the metacontext of the film or the Black History Month themes (though he has decided to do his report for the month on one of the Airmen in the film, Ray "Ray Gun" Gannon). He thought that the flying and the fight scenes were mostly believable and exciting. He liked the story and the dilemmas it presented.

He even gave an analysis of the heroism of the story that made me sit up and listen.

There are two main characters in the story, "Lightning" (Joe Little, played by David Oweloyo) and "Easy" (Marty Julian, played by Nate Parker). "Lightning" is the risk-taker, the one who breaks all the rules, the daredevil, the glory-seeker. "Easy" is the calm, responsible flight leader, who internalizes all his anger and ambivalence and feels he cannot live up to his father's expectations.

Over dinner, the family discussed whom we thought was more heroic. I said that "Lightning" was the hero. He was the one that made the big splash. He had a romance with a beautiful Italian woman. He was the most proficient fighter, he got the most glory.

This is the Greek view of a hero, the view of the heroes of the "Iliad." The ones who are the most outstanding, the most bigger than life, are given the fame and remembered. Achilles falls into this category.

But stepson was having none of it. "Easy is more heroic than Lightning," he said. "He looked out for his men. He was the one who made sure the wounded pilots got home safely."

For this young man, a hero is the person who serves others and not himself. In other words, a role model.

 "Red Tails" is an unqualified success, therefore, in at least one household in America.

Me? I liked all the characters and hated having to wait to see if they would all survive. I understand all the critics' criticisms, about shallowness and broad brush strokes. But it didn't stop me from leaving the film with wet cheeks.

Is it good art? I'll leave that to the critics. Is it good myth? Go see it, and judge for yourself.

The secret to a great mommy blog

Recently I suggested to a Facebook friend that she could convert her frequent, humorous, endearing posts to a winning mommy blog. She might even make money.

My friend wondered how that could be done.

Well, this post is for her.

And the short answer is, of course, story.

Those who read BwP regularly know that the heart of this blog is the power of stories. And the heart of a good mommy blog is, in my opinion, powerful stories.

I'm not necessarily talking about wrenching, emotional stories about ill children. It doesn't have to be that serious or difficult.

I'm talking about women who communicate in a positive, optimistic way the everyday joys and struggles of their (happy, not-so-happy, always interesting) families. Usually this is a nuclear family, one with a husband (in the background, supportive but not intrusive into the mom's life) and at least one child (usually photogenic, always anecdote-worthy).

The blog's cover page is attractive and inviting. The colors used are warm, the font rounded. Wit and fun delight your eyes in the title and subtitles.The mommy is humble, yet a great writer and an excellent, dedicated parent. You never get the impression from the blog that the mommy has got it all under control. But neither do you sense in any way that the chaos is about to take over.

The stories are often a bit like The Little Engine That Could, the ur-mommy blog story. Personal challenges are taken on and surmounted. Stick-to-it-iveness is emphasized. Qute qid quotes abound. When everyone gets the flu, the humor turns dark but stays sweet (like 55% dark chocolate).

There is honesty, but not self-pity. Pride, but not over-confidence.

Remember those annual Christmas letters we used to send? The ones about how we were doing and all our accomplishments throughout the year? So and so was promoted at work and Junior made the A honor roll and is captain of the tiddlywinks squad? Remember how we began to loathe them and make fun of the smuggest ones?

Mommy blogs avoid that pitfall by the power of the Internet. Truly, no one can condense a year's worth of living into one letter without it sounding self-congratulatory or at least self-involved.

But if a mom posts a state-of-the-family letter two or three times a week, measuring out life as it comes, readers see a fuller, truer, less edited picture of the mom and her family. The year-end story post then becomes a fond remembrance rather than a laundry list of accomplishments.

Some mommy blogs exploit angles: this mommy concentrates on food and cooking, food allergies, or weight issues. This one concentrates on knitting, weaving, yarn. Another on pets and animal rescue. Still another on families and politics. Not enough on teen parenting. And so on.

All of this can be written and given out for free, or you can make money on it. Once you have a large enough readership you can sell ads. You can do paid product reviews and product-marketing posts. You can write a book and sell that. You can consult. You can get a job writing something else based on your skill as a blogger.

I have no idea how much money mommy bloggers make. But judging from the number that have real ads on them, a lot are making something.

(Unlike mythology bloggers.)

All that said, it is one thing to write quick and delightful Facebook posts, quite another to keep up with an actual long-form blog. I'm sure most of us are content with sharing our lives (wittily) with our friends. And that's just peachy to me. My Facebook feed could use a bit more story and fewer of those pithy "I told you so" picture-quotations.

Happy blogging, all you Penelopes out there.

Tebow time, resurrection moment

Today America watches the most important football game of the year.

No, it's not the Super Bowl.

It's the game where we get to see whether God still loves Tim Tebow.

This is a great story, American myth at its finest. Because it is not a story about authentic Christianity, or even Tim Tebow himself.

Photo found here.

It's a story overlaid on the resurrection template followed by most if not all American stories.

What do I mean by "resurrection template"? That there is a story pattern in American myth-- mainly Hollywood stories, but lots of others-- lifted directly from the gospel stories of Jesus' resurrection in AD 30 or thereabouts. The pattern goes like this: the good guys start out hoping for a great victory over evil, and there is some promise it will happen. Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse, and suddenly you're staring at defeat.

But somehow, out of nowhere, a miracle occurs and the good guys win anyway.

Just like the resurrection of Jesus after his death and three-day stay in the tomb.

I saw this pattern most recently in the 1999 movie "Never Been Kissed" starring one of my very favorite actresses, Drew Barrymore. It's not a spoiler to say that the resurrection moment in this movie (a romantic resurrection) takes place on an athletic field, the prime place for American miracles to occur.

So far, so good. But what makes Tim Tebow's potential resurrection any different from that of the other seven quarterbacks who will be vying for glory this weekend?

Tim Tebow himself is a supremely gifted athlete who grew up a missionary kid. That type of combination usually results in a very successful person. The athletic ability confers confidence, decisiveness and courage. The MK background makes for a mature, humble, resourceful and resilient Christian. MKs go in the same maturity category as military brats, who also spend a lot of time having to sacrifice their own wishes and desires for the good of others-- and travel a lot to boot.

But this story goes way beyond Tebow the person.

Tebow is already an underdog with a history of miracles achieved. He took over a mediocre team at mid-season, won 6 straight games in dramatic fashion, then lost 3 in a row, then won his most recent game with a dazzling 80-yard touchdown on the first play of overtime. He will be playing against the hated New England Patriots with their rock star quarterback, Tom Brady, and the devil incarnate coach Bill Bellichick (who has been actually convicted of cheating).

That might be enough to make this the biggest game of the year.

But Tebow, through his public confession of faith in Christ, has also made the specific connection between God, Christianity, and the generic resurrection story pattern, which is not thought of a Christian by most Americans. 

This high octane mix of faith and myth combusts American imaginations. We are romantics. We are resurrectionists, as a people. Even non-Christians want to believe that God really does exist and resurrection is real.

Many of us will go into this game hoping that Tim Tebow will win, against all odds. Some of us will be rooting against him (mostly Patriot fans). And the rest of us will at least be curious.

Some people might believe this game is a referendum on evangelical Christianity. If Tebow loses, somehow God is against people who are in your face about Jesus their Lord and personal savior. Or maybe there's no God at all and it was just random what Tebow was doing.

Folks. It's just a game. Really, it's a story. A live, unfolding by the minute story. It will be entertaining and energizing. But it's not about just Tebow. He has 50 teammates, including a phenomenal field goal kicker, Matt Prater, and a receiver, Demaryius Thomas, who can catch a pass and take an 80-yard broken-field run.

And whether God is there or not is not dependent on the outcome of this story. Those who believe have already heard The Story, and that is enough for us.

Holmes again

I wasn't going to see the new Sherlock Holmes (2: a Game of Shadows) film. I hadn't seen #1 and I'd read this review of #2 by the San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle. LaSalle gave it an "empty chair," which is reserved for nucular bombs like "Gigli."

The real creator of Sherlock Holmes found here.

But I have a stepson currently in the 7th grade.

So it was a family togetherness thing.

First, we rented #1 so stepson could get reacquainted with Sherlock (he'd seen it a couple of times before) and so the beloved and I could brace ourselves.

It was fine. Yes, someone took a hatchet to the original Holmes and put him back together in a Frankenstein's monster type of way. Instead of cerebral and spooky, you get campy, ninja, steampunk lite. But that's par for the course in the 21st century. And it was entertaining, in a goofy sort of way. 

So, I thought, how much worse can the second one be? What so got under Mr. LaSalle's skin?

#2, as far as I could tell, was nearly identical to #1. Same Holmes, played by Robert Downey Jr. as a seriously bent genius whose brain-activity needle is always pinned against the red zone, and who can plan out all the moves of his ninjatastic street fights before they even unfold. Same Watson, a good role for Jude Law, as the eye-rolling sidekick who enables Holmes' crackpot scientific experiments and hair-raising dances with death.

The villain in #2, Professor Moriarty, is a real stinker played by Jared Harris. Of course, in #1 we had a real stinker in Lord Blackwood, played by Mark Strong, the resurrecting phantom of the gallows.

In #1, we had a fairly incoherent plot that you just have to go with to enjoy. Same with #2, except that I thought it was less incoherent, maybe because I was trying to pay attention to make sure Mr. LaSalle's review didn't overly influence me. 

In fact, I thought #2's plot was clever. There were gadgets and twists that made me admire the writers in their quest to give something to moviegoers that would keep their interest. I'm not going to give any of them away, but if you want to talk about them in the comments, fire away. 

I personally didn't see what was coming. I couldn't guess. Which is uncommon in Hollywood nowadays.

So after I got out of the movie, I began to think, "This has to be a collaboration. There's no way one person can come up with so many different creative ideas."

I was right. Michele and Kieran Mulroney partner on this screenplay. And it underlines the genius of the original author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in coming up with such an original character as Holmes.

It's something I think about with my own writing. I have had friends-- people who are biased-- say about a chapter from one of my novels, "How did you ever think that idea up?" I'm pleased they think I'm imaginative. But I don't think I could ever write anything alone that is as plot-driven and yet surprising as "Game of Shadows."

Right now I have two novel drafts finished. One is being submitted, and the other is just barely drafted. Neither of the endings are even close to perfect. But I can't think of better. That's sometimes the problem with writing in the partnership of me, myself and I.

I once had a writing buddy. He is a good man. We collaborated on a novel in high school. It was dreadful, of course. It was science fiction. We went on to college and roomed together our first year. I thought we'd continue to work together. But he didn't want to. He told me so, in no uncertain terms.

So we will never know what could have been--unless...?

"Game of Shadows" is fine. It is sort of loud. There are lots of explosions. Lots of fistfights. Lots of chases. Lots of frozen screen tableaux, for which director Guy Ritchie is famous. There's still a fair amount of deducing as well (stepson disagrees-- so does Mick). And campy ninja steampunk-lite stuff. But it isn't an "empty chair" movie. You can't always trust movie critics.

Janus! Nice to see you again (and again)

I try to keep the navel gazing to a minimum here at BwP, but it is the end of the year, we are facing both sides of Janus, god of transitions, and a bit of self-reflection is in order.

I liked 2011. 2011 took a long time to be over and was challenging, which to me is a good year. As I get older, I want time to go slower, not faster.

Image found here.

When I was younger I couldn't wait till summer and the leisure that summer brings. Nowadays I am savoring every day, regardless of the activity (or lack thereof).  

I learned in 2011 that I value BwP and want to keep at it, even if infrequently. This year I only did 37 posts, including this one, but I enjoyed writing every one, and I hope each of them was a good read. (37 is in fact an increase from 28 in 2010).

In the first years of BwP my focus was on Greek mythology, and most search engine queries still concern that topic. I am most frequently visited during the school year, when students are taking Greek myth courses in college. 

But much of what I want to say about Greek Mythology is up. My focus in recent years and going forward has been on contemporary good stories, Hollywood and otherwise.

I would like 2012 to be a year for BwP where

• I write 50 posts or more. A post a week on average. Not too much geekifying on deep subjects, not too little



• I continue movie reviews, following mainstream Hollywood as best I can, searching for clues about what makes America tick, and what our future holds (stay tuned for Sherlock Holmes post)



• self-published books continue to get attention. I have decided not to do reviews except for those books I like, or at least books that someone will like. Life's too short to devote space to something you don't want someone to read. Note: I am very open to authors sending me books to review-- if I don't like the book, I'll tell you why in an email.



• I post on Greek Mythology as I am led.



• at least one food post gets done. Food is good.



• I keep up the dialogue about the business and craft of writing, and report on (fingers crossed) my publication success

BwP will serve as my brand name when and if I publish or sell my novels. One, Healing Knowledge, is in the query process with agents and publishers. Longtime readers will remember I posted several chapters of that a long time ago. Another, Skater in a Strange Land, currently has 12 chapters posted online. I just finished my first draft and have high hopes for it. Read a bit and see what you think.

Sometime in March 2012 I'll publish my 6th anniversary post. If you've read me from the beginning, why, thank you very much. If this is your first time having a spot of breakfast with the young lady from Greece, welcome. And however frequently you spend time here, I hope you are getting a diet rich in mythos and logos.

 

Tintin take

It's a sign of the times when a family goes to an eye-popping, spectacular, exquisitely animated computer-generated animated feature film and the composite score (out of 10) is a smidge north of a 6.

That was Tintin's fate tonight, premiere night, when my particular group of relational units went to see the newest Spielberg project.

Movie poster from here.

To be fair, there were only 2 true Tintin fans in the focus group, my son and I. Bedtimes were our favorite time to read all the classic graphic novels by Herge, the Belgian genius storyteller. We also watched all the animated TV shows that were out there on VHS tape back in the day. I first saw one of those way way back in the seventies, and for me, it was the greatest thing ever, the books brought to life.

The movie was a careful tribute to the original books, including references and Easter eggs throughout.

Yet for all that, I couldn't give it more than a 7. There was something tiresome about the whole thing. I have read the books so many times there was no suspense as to the ending (the plot is, if you don't know and do care, based on The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure). And all the unlikely chase scenes and explosions and hotels with tanks inside them ended up feeling contrived, as if thousands of people had worked on them to get them perfect.

Which, I think, is what actually happened.

Plus, this idea of a one-on-one duel with the bad guy at the end that lasts for about 20 minutes is getting boring as well. (Do not worry, I am not spoiling anything by saying this. You probably won't see it coming, and it has a lot of unusual elements that are somewhat surprising.)

I liked Tintin the character. I like Jamie Bell, who voices Tintin, and the animation does a good job capturing him and his dog Snowy. Snowy was the consensus favorite character among our crowd. We do have a little white dog at home. Maybe this influenced things.

There will be a sequel. I will go see it. But I don't think that it will ever replace the memory of that TV show in my young heart. Often, nostalgia for a thing is better than someone else's vision of the thing itself.

INTPs I have known

BwP gets a fair amount of traffic from web surfers interested in the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator (MBTI). Some time ago I did a whole set of posts on Greek divinities and Myers-Briggs. Myers-Briggs chatrooms are among the few places my blog is linked elsewhere on the web.

Delphi: Apollo's home.

Here is a good summary of the system. Go there and come back if you are not familiar with MBTI.

I like Myers-Briggs. Some people think it's as reliable as astrology; others consider it reductive and not reflective of the variety of human personality. I think it's true that if you stick to the basic 16 personality types not everyone is going to fit in. But if you use the "X" option, where a person straddles the line between the four basic opposites, things get extremely various. Some people believe, for example, that Jesus Christ would have tested out as XXXX.

But sometimes Myers-Briggs is dead, straight on. I was reminded of this recently when my son posted to Facebook his annual college football bowl winner predictions. There are 35 bowl games, and he spent a large number of hours analyzing each matchup, then crafted capsule summaries of his analysis with a predicted winner for each game. I don't doubt he will be very accurate with his predictions. He got no remuneration out of this process (his mother pointed out the pro journalist at Sports Illustrated only disagreed with him in 5 games). He did it for its own sake.

This type of behavior is totally characteristic of the INTP, or Apollo in my mythological typology. INTPs are often extremely gifted intellectually. They have a singular ability to concentrate. Their intellectual output is detailed and finely considered. They live to analyze, deduce and explain. Sports statistics are male INTPs' Garden of Eden.

Reading through my son's predictions, I was immediately reminded of another INTP I knew very long ago, about whom I once posted. Ted was a precocious sports journalist, and when he was 13, in the 8th grade, he wrote an analysis of a college football game between the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California that was published in the student newspaper at Cal. He predicted the Trojans would win, but as well we know, all the logical analysis goes out once the chaos of life intrudes. Berkeley won, behind the heroics of quarterback Joe Roth and running back Chuck Muncie.

Ted and I went on to write at student newspapers throughout high school, and as he went off to college I thought he would be a broadcaster some day, one of my predictions that did not come true. Recently my son has expressed an interest in broadcasting. Last year he was the play-by-play announcer for his high school's Powder Puff football game. He was brilliant, in my humble opinion.

Apollo is often seen as the perfection of Greek manhood, the eternally shining youth. This is a fiction of 19th century romantics. Apollo was an excellent athlete (another INTP, Tiger Woods, is an example of the extreme athletic potential of INTPs), but he is mainly a geek-- interested in such complex and theoretical arts as music, poetry, medicine, and prophecy (e.g. bowl game predictions).

This is the INTP. Yes, a reductive way of classifying the variousness of human beings. But useful for those of us "N" types who love to see the big picture.

Question: Is Zeus perfect?

It's been a while since I did a pure mythology post. But in honor of all those students these past two months who googled "Odysseus death" and came to BwP, here's a new one that I think would make for a great paper for your college mythology class.

Image from here.

Last week in school a student asked a brilliant question: "isn't Zeus perfect?"

The question is brilliant because it raises (some would say "begs," but that would be a misuse of the term) so many other questions, among them

• What does "perfect" mean?
• Why would Zeus above all other gods be perfect?
• Why would we think that any god could be perfect?
• What do we know about Zeus that makes it seem like he should be perfect?

Some thoughts follow, rather than complete answers.

If anyone knows anything about Zeus, it's that he's the supreme god of Greek mythology. He's the one with the beard, the thunderbolt, the throne. He's the Big Guy Upstairs, the Father of Gods and Men.

Which makes him a lot like the popular vision of the God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, who, despite generations of sermon messages to the contrary, is still thought of by many as a Very Large Dude with a Very Large Stick.

The modern God in whom many still believe is supposed to be perfect. That is, he knows everything, sees everything, always existed, will never go away, never makes a mistake, always does the right thing. This God's son Jesus is a good example of who God is. For some people today, Jesus hovers about six inches off the ground and is utterly "perfect" but not quite human.

So, perfection in this popular view involves traits that regular humans could never have.

Zeus was never perfect in this way. None of the Greek gods ever were, either.

In fact, though Zeus was supreme, his stature never approached that of the one holy God of Judaism and Christianity. Zeus was powerful, but within a system of many divinities. His brothers Poseidon and Hades were nearly as powerful, but in different spheres. Aphrodite, goddess who was in charge of making people fall in love, worked her magic on Zeus a number of times. It could be argued that the Fates are the most important of all Greek divinities, for they presided over those things that had to happen. Zeus himself could not change Fate.

Zeus is, in fact, a god of justice who himself doesn't always do just things, among them cheating on his wife Hera ("Aphrodite made me do it!"). That's why philosophers sprang up in Greece who wanted to convert Zeus into something more like the God of Judaism and Christianity. In any case, philosophers were not interested in the bearded man on the throne who was the original do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do type of guy.

Being perfect is a tough job. The movie "Bruce Almighty" starring Jim Carrey, and Morgan Freeman as God, demonstrates in a light but effective way what it might mean to have 3,000,000,000 conflicting prayers on your plate at any given moment. Remember the "You've Got Prayers!" scene? Not everyone can win the lottery who prays for it.

So, Zeus is not perfect in our sense of being perfect, which is part of the reason why Greeks of later times looked at Christ and the God of Christianity as a perfect alternative. I don't think we can actually grasp what perfection is, but many of us hope that perfection in a God includes love. 

Pie on a brisk Saturday morn

Hereabouts, the December morning light is charming, almost as white as winter white light when there's snow on the ground, but calm rather than brilliant.

Here's some pie for those of you who like pie:

Piggybacking on my post about the ideal school, here's something from C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian. What young person wouldn't like this curriculum, heavy on the music and physical education:

[Caspian] had not many hours to spare, for now his education was beginnning in earnest. He learned sword-fighting and riding, swimming and diving, how to shoot with the bow and play on the recorder and the theorbo, how to hunt the stage and cut him up when he was dead, besides Cosmography, Rhetoric, Heraldry, Versification, and of course History, with a little Law, Physic, Alchemy and Astronomy.

Granted, there's no Latin or Greek in Caspian's school day, but Rhetoric (the art of giving and analyzing speeches) and Versification (creating poetry within metrical rules) are excellent substitutes. There is no art per se, but Heraldry can be like art, if Caspian is copying or painting coats of arms.

*

Men's Health magazine has released a list of the top one hundred sexiest women of all time. All time is a lot of time. Does that mean that Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman of the ancient world, was in the running? Not, I guess. Perhaps only women who have been photographed get to be contestants, because the winner was someone who is lovely but not the greatest of all time: Jennifer Anniston.

There is no contest as to who is the sexiest of all time: Grace Kelly, of course. That is because class in a woman is the sexiest thing of all, and Grace had more class in her bitty pinkie finger than nearly all of the other hundred combined. Audrey Hepburn, honorable mention.

Grace Kelly ended up #86 in the list. De gustibus non est disputandum.

Photo from here.

The Muppets: nostalgia on steroids

I never watched a lot of the original Muppets television show, although I knew it was a very big phenomenon. All the characters, all the inside jokes, all the celebs who made appearances-- it was a big deal.

Image from here.

But that was back-- I don't know-- 25 years ago?

(No, more.)

And there's no way the Muppets are going to make a comeback.

But everyone in Hollywood does make a comeback, and the Muppets have, too. And even if the voices don't sound quite exactly like they used to, the trademark Muppet comedy is back and better than ever.

The original Muppets show started in 1976, which is actually 35 years ago, but one thing they did is still very "now:" self-consciously play with the idea of show.

The Muppets never just did a show where you saw the performance and that was it. They interspersed scenes behind the scenes, showing the sausage-making quality of putting on a stage show. Kermit the Frog's ultra-nerd nervousness and neuroticism added humor as he tried to make sure all was well amidst the floating chaos of bahk-bahk chickens, prop mishaps, and Miss Piggy divadom.

All that comes back in spades in the new movie, along with plenty of self-referential break-the-fourth-wall intertextual inside joke stuff. Which means that the adorable and star-powered Amy Adams, looking very wholesome with long, curled hair, actually has very little to do in the picture. 

Yes, there is plenty of show in this Muppets show. To spare, in fact. Almost as if they took the original show and pumped it up on Muppet-Growth-Hormone. At the end, despite all the self-consciousness, it would not be surprising if you wipe away a bit of a tear.

Congrats to the people behind all this. And congrats to everyone who kept the flame burning all these years.

It was worth it.