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Mustardseed Cochrane
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My Baby My Darling at Dusk
1636 days
by Mustardseed Cochrane
in Music
I was out the door in the morning. There was a trip to the DMV followed by errands all around town. There was that sharp and sometimes multiple popping and cracking sound when I stretched my neck and shoulders by the time it was dusk, vivid and beautiful and languid. I wanted dinner, and a beer if there was one in the fridge. There was still the drive home, though. Music, that’s going to help. Put something on and hey, why not something new which I’ve never heard before? Expand the musical tastes. She & Him Volume Two? Okay.
This Week In Normality – Zombies VS. Vampires
1843 days
I suppose it’s a matter of preference when you ask which is better: the Zombie or the Vampire. Both have origins in superstitions and folklore, and both have seen their respective mythologies evolve with the needs of storytellers. The original zombie stories originated in Vodou stories, where witch doctors or priests known as bokors would revive and control the dead. Some of the old vampiric folktales involve bloated corpses visiting their old neighborhoods. Zombies now eat flesh, or brains, or what else? And Vampires dress in leather and vinyl and drink blood?
But who would win in an all out battle between the two? Many would say the Vampire. This makes sense. They have sentience and therefore may understand themselves, thus possessing the ability to influence their enviroment. Zombies as they stand now, well, they are rather one track-minded, aren’t they? Brains, or flesh. The movie “Interview With The Vampire” utilizes conversation for its frame story. Ever sat and listened to a zombie in a movie reflect about themselves? Or sunsets?
Sentience makes the monster. The only zombies that I’ve come across that retain their intelligence are the Marvel Zombies, with guilt-ridden Peter Parker carrying even more angst now that he’s eaten his aunt and wife. Will other storytellers take a note from this cue and explore the possibilities of sentient flesh eaters? I’d like to think so.
In the meantime, who would win between the mindless zombies and the sentient vampires? There are factors to consider here. First, is the battle being decided on who wins supremacy over the food supply? (yes, that’s us folks, being thrown under the bus by yours truly) In a practical perspective, this should be the only battle worth fighting. Which leads me the next scenario: who would win in a world with either an exhausted food supply? (yup, we’re not there anymore, folks)
Zombies, let’s face it, you are the underdog. Your lack of self-awareness and your inability to communicate with one another and thus cooperate in a sustained group effort might be sending you the way of extinction as the Vampires coordinate your demise. Of course, whether or not vampires are successful is irrelevant, as they’ll be starving. See, your bad meat with very contaminated blood, dear zombie. I suppose both of you will lose in the end, since eventually there won’t be any food for either one of you. Yet, therein lies your victory, zombie. Your lack of intelligence will make you unaware of this, while the vampire will get to reflect on every last spasm of hunger pains in their bodies.
For those who have seen Zombieland, which rule was it that said you should always enjoy the little things?
With that, Killian offers us a series of confessions which I guarantee you, folks, I will personally ensure he does not forget the error of admitting this to anyone.
D. Composition meditates on both the vampire and the zombie in pop culture.
And while I might have something else to add later on, I now turn the discussion over to you, the Normalinauts. I’ve briefly explored one Zombie VS. Vampire scenario, but I say let’s open this up for discussion. As a matter of fact, I say let’s have a contest.
Zombies VS Vampires $5 AMAZON GIFT CARD Throwdown!
9843 days
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Post your best Zombie VS. Vampire scenarios in the comments of this page between now through October 31, and a winner, chosen by the crew here at NR, will receive a $5.00 Amazon Gift Card in their e-mail. Unfortunately, the contest isn’t open to any of the NR staff.
There we go, now let’s have it! Give us your best!
Looking Up In The Sky With My Mind’s Eye
0868 days
A panel from All-Star Superman, with pencils by Frank Quitely and colors by Jamie Grant.
I feel as if I forgot about Superman until I came across Grant Morrison’s interpretation in his All-Star series that debuted in 2005. It crystalized what I loved about this character the first time I saw him racing against a train in Richard Donner’s “Superman: The Movie.” What made the character resonate for me in both was that Morrison and Donner didn’t necessarily reinvent the character. Rather they identified elements that were important about him and explored them. I’m not referring to his powers, which are magnificent of course, but they’re not enough to sustain an emotional journey of a character through a story. It was the character’s humanity. Donner focuses on how Clark Kent grew up and became Superman, while Grant Morrison tells the story of what the Man of Tomorrow does with the last days of his life.
Superman: The Movie (Extended Edition) and Superman II: The Donner Cut
When you watch Superman I and Superman II (The Donner Cut), you may find a superhero comic book movie on the surface, but underneath is the engine of a coming of age story. There’s a moment in the first Superman movie when young Clark Kent is talking with his father after he’s just finished beating a rival schoolmate back to his farm by outrunning a train. He expresses to his father that he’s frustrated because he can do things like kick a football seemingly into orbit. Yet he has to hide his abilities, and stand the ridicule and humiliation of his rival as he drives away with a girl he liked. He’s still that same kid who wants to show off all of the wonderful things he can do when he’s standing before his other father, Jor-El, telling him about the feats he did in his first night as Superman. Jor-El tells him he understands how good it felt to do this, and acknowledges his son’s vanity. He doesn’t judge him for it. Clark doesn’t yet understand consequences, though. When faced with the possibility of a life without Lois Lane after trying to stop two rockets, he turns back time. He can fix anything, that Superman can.
Yet again Clark is still that same kid from Smallville when he’s standing before Jor-El in the Donner Cut of Superman II, complaining about the unfairness of not being able to have what he wants. He doesn’t wish to be alone, another essential human quality Donner focuses on that drives Clark’s choices. A life with the companionship of Lois Lane is possible now, if only he weren’t Superman. Yet he’s warned that there will be consequences if he gives up being Superman.
(SPOILER ALERT, in case you’ve never seen Donner’s Cut)
He discovers those consequences when he returns, powerless, to his fortress to beg his father to restore his powers, which his father does. At a price. If you’ve never seen the Superman movies, you must know that crystals are a key component of his Fortress of Solitude. All of the knowledge of his civilization is stored in these crystals, including the artificial duplicate of Jor-el he speaks with. Jor-el tells his son that restoring his powers will wipe out the remaining energy in the main crystal, rendering it inert. They will never speak again, and Clark will have essentially lost his connection to a second father. There is a poignant scene towards the end, the one in which I feel demonstrates the complete arc of Clark’s growth. He stands looking at the Fortress of Solitude from a distance, with Lois Lane behind him. Without saying a single word he destroys the Fortress of Solitude. It’s a lifeless structure, and he lets go of it. Is it an act of acceptance and letting go, therefore a sign of maturity? I think so.
There is one warning I have to give you about the Donner cut, though. For those who aren’t familiar with the film and its history, a lot of key scenes were never filmed. This included an ending to the movie. When faced with the option of using the ending filmed by Donner’s replacement Richard Lester or simply recycling the ending from the first movie where Superman turns back time again, the latter was chosen. Yes, it does betray the thematic arc of the story. Therefore, I prefer to leave the movie at an earlier scene. It’s one where Superman has brought Lois back to her apartment, and she stands crying because she knows they can’t be together. And she also knows who he is and it will break her heart to see him every day at work but never be able to reach out to him. She asks if she got the man she wanted, and he affirms it. Then they part ways. I say I prefer to leave the movie at this point rather than continue on to the next sequence because what are our heroes and the lessons they learn if they can simply wipe away the lesson as if it never happened?
(End SPOILER)
All-Star Superman
Superman saves the day one more time only to discover that doing so has killed him. What you find in the stories that follow this discovery is an introspective Superman, taking the measure of his life and focusing on what is important to him. There are so many things to settle, decides The Man of Steel. There is his affection for Lois Lane. There is the question that haunts him: what will happen to the human race without a Superman? How can he save the day from beyond the grave? He asks himself what a world without a Superman would be like? (And I might add that it’s an inpspired approach he takes to find out the answer to this in the latter half of the series, made possible by the realms of speculative fiction.)
In trying to find the next Superman he turns to Lex Luthor, telling him in the guise of Clark Kent that Superman and him could have done great things together. In trying to reach out to his greatest enemy, a man who can cure cancer with a cell phone and a safety pin, he finds it’s not Luthor that is his greatest foe. It is Luthor’s ego.
Yet there has to be a way. “There’s always a way,” as he reminds himself numerous times throughout the series. Even when he finds himself powerless and trapped on a planet, slowly being crushed by the heightened gravity around him and trying to find a way to communicate with a race that doesn’t quite speak his language, he still tells himself there’s a way. Even when his final hours are approaching and he reflects on how much he’s accomplished and yet how much more he has to do, there’s still away.
All-Star Superman is essentially Everyman meets Superman. Grant Morrison’s choice to have Superman face his mortality and decide what he values in his life also allows us to have a set of stories that incapsulate why the character has been around for so many decades. I found some of these stories moving, such as the one that explores an episode with his father, Jonathan Kent, from Superman’s days in Smallville when he was Superboy.
After looking up
I think about all of this and come to wonder if perhaps it’s not Superman that is my first love? Perhaps it’s the hero’s quest and coming of age, as I look at other stories I’ve come to love over the years. I think about Huckleberry Finn torn between what he feels is right and what he’s been told is right when it comes to the matter of rescuing the slave Jim and learning to make up his own mind. Or Gilgamesh, seeking out the secrets of immortality after the death of his friend, Ekindu. Perhaps it’s myth? Maybe it’s all of it. Superman was first, though.
On Grease Paint and the Negatives of Chronic Stress
1883 days
Ian McKellen as King Lear.
It is essential to find past-times to help one relax during a semester, as the negative effects of chronic stress may not only affect school work, they may also have long lasting effects on emotional and physical health. Studies have shown that chronic stress may be linked to anxiety, deppression, weight loss, insomnia, and may affect concentration and memory. One needs diversions. Relaxing evenings with friends, or sitting down to enjoy a book, a good story. I enjoy live theater. I saw Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren and David Strathairn in Dance of Death on Broadway in 2002. It was an amazing experience, as these were highly skilled performers. There is a theater a few minutes from my house. The dilemma, though, is that we live in an age of instant gratification. CDs, DVDs, the Internet. Anything we want and when we want it. Except none of it is live. What do we do then if we want our theater to be live and instant? Compromise. We kidnap a thespian. Depending on taste, we might need to make room for two.
We must first identify our preferences. Musical theater? Classics, from Lope De Vega and Shakespeare, to Brecht? Ballet? Farse and tragedy and tragicomedy and operettas? Also, while your thespian can play multiple parts, and in some cases perform an entire show for you, this can wear your thespian out faster than if you had two. This is especially true if you’re a Shakespeare aficionado, as I am. I once went through seven thespians in a four month period, as Hamlet can kill almost anyone. For musical theater, Sondheim and Fosse might only cripple or cause them initial discomfort.
There is also thespian maintenance. You will want to keep them in a room on a second floor, preferably with a balcony, which will allow them to have contact with visiting friends and family members. The thespian is an emotional creature, as you’ll become fully aware of during their first weeks of captivity while they sob in lamentation. Therefore these balcony visits will be essential. Sliding recent write-ups of their work may also help, whether fictitious or not. See your local community college journalism department for assistance.
Also consider diet. Don’t feed your thespian too much within two hours of any planned use, as they will be weighed down. A few more things to consider for maintaining your thespian include decorating their rooms (a little stage in one corner can go a long way to making your thespian feel cozy) or cages if you’re under budget constraints; their voices are delicate, therefore much like cigars, you want to keep them in a temperature controlled enviroment; keep little statues covered in gold foil as “awards” you can give them as treats; if you have a method actor and you ask them to take on the part of an animal, you may want to lay down newspaper; and exercise. The little stage in the corner works great for step aerobics.
Remember that when we talk about kidnapping your own thespian, we’re really talking about a guarantee of your future, and of your health. While the costs might appear steep, remember to weigh them against the cost, as well as discomfort, which you might have to face in the long run from chronic stress. To health and happiness.
To War Against The Decline Of His Meridian
3890 days
by Mustardseed Cochrane
in Books
The Phantom Cart by Salvador Dali (1933), used as the cover image for the first edition of Blood Meridian, Or The Evening Redness In The West.
Blood Meridian could have been nothing more than a catalog of violence, rather than a terrifying meditation on the atrocities committed by the Glanton Gang. Save for one, its characters revel in the murders they commit, and while writer Cormac McCarthy imbues their acts with a certain warped eloquence through his use of beautiful and highly descriptive prose that reflects this macabre celebration, he does not do so to merely glorify the violence. Nor does he judge it as a mindless act. His central proponent for violence, Judge Holden, informs us that war is the only true game, for risking death, it is the only game that “swallows up game, player, and all.” His meditations and explanations of the methodology he uses to vindicate himself and the rest of the scalp hunters’ acts, thereby liberating them from any apprehension they might have in committing them, is perhaps the most terrifying part of the book.
The book is based on the true story of a group of men led by John Joel Glanton, a former member of the U.S. Army during the mid-19th century, who was hired by Mexican governors to kill and scalp Indians on the borders of the United States and Mexico during 1849 and 1850. It follows a nameless protagonist only referred to as ‘the kid’ after he runs away from rural Tennessee at the age of fourteen, meeting up with the Glanton Gang two years later. McCarthy tells us that the kid can “neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence,” something we see in the second page as he has nightly fights with sailors in a bar until he’s shot in the back, just below his heart. He is essentially the perfect initiate for Judge Holden’s philosophy. Yet, that is the central conflict of the book, for while the kid rides and murders with the gang, his conscience is not completely free when he performs these acts. When given the duty of killing an injured member of the gang after everyone else has left, he cannot bring himself to do so. His reluctance undermines everything the Judge believes in.
Judge Holden is described as being about seven feet tall, lacking any hair growth and with the complexion of an albino and the face of an infant. He has traveled the world, speaks numerous languages, including an understanding for ancient and cryptic ones. An accomplished fiddler and dancer, it appears there isn’t anything he cannot subjugate and nor master; even time, as he hasn’t appeared to age when years have passed. He carries notebooks into which he sketches and makes notes of a variety of things he finds along the gang’s journey—a piece of armor, birds, insects—and after he’s done with them he destroys them. When asked why he does so, he explains that he wishes to remove the existence of these things from the “memory of man.” Only the Judge will hold the knowledge and understanding of their existence. As he explains later on, “Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” His desire is to be suzerain, or overlord, of the world. Nature is the only thing that can undermine him, because it is the only thing that exists independent of man’s will and desire. Nature, and as McCarthy demonstrates, the kid’s refusal to be seduced by Holden’s views and be carried off like a bride, as one of the characters remarks. Since it’s implied that the Judge rapes children, this is perhaps not to be taken as a flippant remark.
If you wish to be disturbed, then in the spirit of our “bring the pain” theme, here is a book whose characters not only “bring the pain,” but are also acutely aware of why they do so. Of some who enjoy it, and of some who are faintly disturbed by the prospect of it. A conversation with violence, so to speak.
5/5 - Punched in the face by AWESOME!
Nights on Mary Street: Summer 1997-Spring 1998
0898 days
The seating capacity is listed at three-hundred and twenty five, and even if only half of that attended that night, there were still plenty of witnesses. A little over one-hundred people, if not more, who remained silent. There had probably been that many the week before who watched a seventeen year old boy whose leg was trembling in his jeans as he stared beyond the stage lights and into that void from which he was drawing laughter every few moments. I had prepared the material for that previous week.
I had a notebook with the spiral binding smashed down. I poured ideas into this notebook at school, on the bus in the mornings and afternoons. I would try out the material by slipping it in to conversations with friends, strangers. I would make note of what worked and try to understand why the rest didn’t work. Would a slight change in phrasing clarify the punch line?
SUMMER-FALL 1997
I sat outside of the Improv Comedy Club Miami every Monday night for about two months when they hosted Open Mic Night. I don’t remember going home after school. I don’t even remember eating dinner. I would get off the Metro-Rail at the Coconut Grove or Douglas Road stations, then board a smaller bus that went back and forth between the two stations, dropping off passengers on the sidewalks of Coconut Grove.
There had been an opportunity before the waiting, and before the club owner and the event coordinator for the open mic night discoverer I was seventeen. I had heard about an open mic night event and after talking about doing something like that for a while I decided to go to this club and reserve a spot. I arrived early, I gave my name and the young lady at the counter at the front of the club put me down. Then I entered the club and I could see the small stage and the crowd seated at their tables. My group and I found a table at the other end of the club and we sat and waited. Performers started going on and I waited my turn. How would they know to find me? Performers went on, and some received laughs while others found reasons never to come back. I don’t know which would feel worse when you’re standing up there and the material isn’t working: silence or booing? When the last performer left the stage and the host for the night announced the winner of the open mic night, I realized I had missed my opportunity. Don’t think it passed me by, now, because it didn’t. I didn’t once see any of the performers stand up from any table and walk up to the stage. I could have stood up and walked back to the front and asked if Iwas right to wait for my turn out in the audience as I watched each performers’ set. I was afraid. I sat at my table while my friend Idolka held my hand, and the numbing feeling in my stomach spread through the rest of my body. Then the night was over, and the two month wait outside of the club every Monday night began. They had found out how old I was and wouldn’t let me back in. There was even one night where the event coordinator, as a calm as he could remain, told me to leave as I was interfering with the patrons. My two months ended when neither the owner of the club nor the event coordinator were present, and I was allowed to go on. I didn’t get booed off the stage. There were giggles and a few small laughs, and then I was off the stage. While it wasn’t a spectacular set, I didn’t faint, I didn’t freeze up, and I wanted more.
SPRING 1998
My Mom and my brothers took a trip to Disneyworld during springbreak in April. I had already been to Disneyworld, and I wanted some time to myself, therefore I chose to stay behind. This is something I did a few times whenever the family took trips, and it took quite an effort the first few times to convince my Mom to let me stay.
I’m not sure what my exact thought process was that led me to get dressed and grab my bus card to stand outside on Le Jeune Road and catch the bus to the Douglas Road station, there to transfer to the bus into the Grove. It was one of those moments where I wanted something and had wanted it for a very long time, and I failed to see any reason why I shouldn’t try one more time. The timing felt right. I was on my own away from my family, I would be turning eighteen in about three weeks. This needed to be done. I couldn’t have just one brief interlude on that stage.
I think it was one of my friends who called my name for me to come to the stage that night. I had pieced together a rough set over all of those months. It was all rough material, one of the bits being about talking about President Bill Clinton entering Congress as if he was walking to the BeeGees “Staying Alive” while Al Gore and Hillary Clinton stood behind him providing the chorus. I remember looking down at my leg and being surprised that I couldn’t see it visibly shaking as I could I feel it doing exactly that. I remember the man they told me was an FBI Agent, who would sit in the front tables close to the stage and heckle the performers. I remember being surprised when some of the material received a good laugh.
Then I remember the next week. I had used up all of the material in my notebook the previous week, but I wanted to go back again. I figured I could put something together quickly. That was vey naive, as I didn’t have the experience to do something like that. Professional Stand-Up Comedians gather a large body of material from which they can draw from at a moment’s notice and piece together a quick set. I was not a professional.
There’s a sense of hyperawareness when an audience is quiet and there are lights blinding you. It’s almost like a zen experience. I remember walking up to the stage, excited, and walking up to the microphone. I remember the silence of the audience after I said my opening bit (which I refuse to recount to anyone who wasn’t there that night). In that silence came the realization that I was in trouble, and there proceeded a strange calm over my body as I accepted there was nothing I could come up with at that very moment that would save me. My friends tried to console me afterwards. They performed there on a regular basis. They understood.