As I mentioned in the first part of my treatise on the Left Behind movie, the plot of the movie, while following the basic premise set forth by the book on which it’s based, veers wildly away from the source material in a lot of significant ways.
Many of the changes are due, as I said, to time constraints, but I really have to believe that other changes were the result of the filmmakers reading the book and coming to the realization that pretty much every character – especially the “heroes” – is a complete and utter douchebag.
Further, the filmmakers clearly put more thought into the actual consequences that would follow from millions of people suddenly disappearing, which is to say that they put any amount of thought into it.
For example, in the book, post-Rapture, we have Chloe making her way back to Chicago from California in like a day. A day. With cars crashing, trains derailing, and planes falling out of the sky all over the world, a trip from California to Chicago would be a long, arduous journey, and that’s assuming that the government hasn’t declared martial law and totally clamped down on unnecessary travel.
To get around this in the movie, Chloe was on her way to California when The Rapture occurred, making her journey back to Chicago much more credible.
A sub-plot in which Buck fakes his own death after the murder of a friend and an attempt on his own life that costs yet another person his life is dropped as well, which is good news, as in the book this leads Buck to make a deal with the people trying to kill him, promising not to speak a word of the murders – bear in mind that we’re talking about an investigative reporter here – in exchange for their promise to not try to kill him anymore.
The time constraints of the movie make it much more fast-paced than the book, and some decent effects give us some moderately exciting visuals that the book just could not provide, so, as I’ve said, while the movie is still dreadful, it’s vastly superior to the book in almost every way.
(Except for the music. As Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig, who, I believe may be Jewish – so hard to tell with a name like that – might say, Oy vey.)
That being said, in a very perverse way, I can’t help but feel cheated and outraged by how far the movie deviated from the source material. I mean, no Pan-Con Club? No scene of Buck reaching over to wipe a piece of chocolate from a cookie she’s eating off of Chloe’s face with his finger, and then licking the chocolate off of his finger? (Bearing in mind that Chloe is someone that Buck just met less than half an hour before.) Come on; I desperately wanted to find out if it was as creepy to watch as it was to read about.
So yeah, I couldn’t help but feel cheated by the fact that the Left Behind movie was not a more faithful transliteration of the book, even though it was superior in many ways. It was a horrible movie, but it wasn’t anywhere near as horrible as it ought to have been, so how could I not feel cheated?
Maybe the sequel, Tribulation Force, will live down to my expectations.
There’s a lot more I could say about the whole mess, both the book and the movie, but as Fred draws close to the end of the first book, a review of the movie is up next, and given how incisive his examination of the book has been, and his examination of the movie is likely to be, why re-invent the wheel? If you want to learn more, head on over to Slacktivist and check it out yourself.
Bonus: Here is the trailer for the movie:
Extra Special Bonus: Left Behind The Music Video
Whooo! (Sorry for the crappy quality of the video. Oh, and for how choppy the playback is. Zing!)
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Friday, June 06, 2008
Leave It Behind Part One
If there’s one thing that can be said about my taste in comic books when I was a kid, it is this: I didn’t have any.
Super hero comics, war comics, Archie comics, horror comics, Richie Rich comics, western comics, bicycle safety instruction comics, and even, God help me, Charlton comics: I read them all.
And I liked them.
I had such a love of the medium that I read everything I could get my hands on, and did so uncritically, believing that, simply because they were comic books they were, by default, good comic books.
Sure, I had my preferences, but in general I gladly read anything that had words and pictures and staples in the center.
As I got older, naturally, I developed a finer appreciation for what was good, and an understanding of what wasn’t, but in those early years, in many ways, it was all the same to me.
Which leads me to Left Behind.
There is pretty much no objective standard, or really even a defensible subjective standard, by which the Left Behind books, and, more to the point of this entry, the movie based on the books, can be deemed good.
It’s just not possible.
That is, of course, unless you are the books’ target audience, who, like young Jon with his uncritical mind, are incapable of seeing any flaws and love the books and movie simply because you love the medium, or, in this case, the message.
For your standard fundy fan of Left Behind, the message is all that matters. These books and movies “tell it like it is,” and considerations of quality storytelling elements like coherent plots, character development, and verisimilitude are for those heathen, unsaved intellectuals.
That lack of any semblance of critical thinking goes a long way towards explaining the otherwise inexplicable success of the books, and, more tellingly, how it is that the books’ fans came to believe the unbelievable, unpalatable, and utterly nihilistic theology that is at the center of the Left Behind series.
In any case, the point of this entry is to talk a little about the Left Behind movie and my thoughts on its quality, or, more accurately, lack thereof.
I’ll start first with a brief rundown of the story and the main characters.
At some point in the “near future,” an Israeli scientist named Dr.Jewy Jewenstein Chaim Rosenzweig has invited a “super fertilizer” that has transformed the arid, Israeli desert into the world’s breadbasket. This serves as the cue for the nations known in the Bible as Gog and Magog – identified in the 1970s by Christian author Hal Lindsey as Russia (though it was then, of course, the Soviet Union) and Ethiopia (no, I’m not kidding) – to launch a full-scale nuclear assault on Israel, because, really, why not?
Because it will piss off God, that’s why not. In a move that pretty much wipes away any doubt about His existence, God moves in to directly protect Israel from its enemies, causing the nukes to harmlessly detonate in the air, and totally eradicating the assembled Russian forces, and that one guy who served as Ethiopia’s contribution, to the assault on Israeli in a move that can only – and I stress the word only – be described as miraculous.
This utterly irrefutable proof of the existence of God is met with a combination of stifled yawns and “Gee, that was odd,” from the world at large.
Shortly thereafter, The Rapture occurs, as throughout the world true, Rapture-believing Christians, and every child below the vague and undefined “age of accountability” cut-off point, including unborn children, drop trou and vanish, leaving behind all of the sinners and the too-old children of the world, along with all of their clothes.
The movie seems to suggest that this amounts to about 130,000, 000 people total, while I believe that the book puts the number somewhere closer to a half a billion, but either number is far too low, even if we assume that the vast majority of self-identified Christians aren’t given the “Get Off of Earth Without Having to Die” card, as the children of the world alone would likely amount to a larger number.
Now, in the hands of a good writer, this could be the set up for a really thrilling and moving story that examines the impact of such a loss on those who were not taken.
In Left Behind, both the book and the movie, however, the disappearance of millions of people proves to be little more than a hiccup, and within days everything is pretty much back to normal, and the story that’s really on everyone’s mind is the selection of a new Secretary General of the United Nations, a charismatic man from Romania named Nicolae Carpathia.
The Carpathia story – Wait, are you still on about your mom and your children disappearing? Get over it; that was yesterday! What? Full-scale assault on Israel swept away by the hand of God? Who cares about that? There’s a good-looking guy taking over the U.N. – is even juicier than most people know, as it just so happens that, in addition to being charismatic, idealistic, and good-looking, Carpathia is actually the Antichrist.
So those are the basics of the story. Let’s meet the key players.
Rayford Steele: Airline pilot. Man’s man. Unsaved.
Chloe Steele: Rayford’s daughter. College student. Too smart for her own good, and, in her own words, “too blasted independent.”
Irene Steele: Rayford’s long-suffering and totally ignored prophecy-believing wife. Taken away in The Rapture.
Raymie Steele: Rayford’s son, also taken away. Called “Raymie” for no apparent reason, given that his actual name is Rayford Steele, Jr.
Cameron “Buck” Williams: Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time. 30 year-old virgin. In the book he’s a print journalist, but in the movie he’s a TV reporter.
Hattie Durham: Flight attendant. Future Whore of Babylon. In the book she was involved in this perverse non-affair with Rayford, the details of which are too gruesome to delve into here. In the movie the affair is a lot less “non,” and considerably more pedestrian, mostly, I think, for the sake of expediency.
Bruce Barnes: Visitation Pastor at Rayford and Irene’s church. He knows all about the End Times prophecies, but never actually believed in them, or said the proper magic words that would have allowed him to be Raptured away. In the book he exists largely for the purposes of exposition, as the story needs someone who knows what’s going on, but if he’d actually believed he wouldn’t be around to serve that function. In the movie his function is to be a black guy. (Note: It’s entirely possible that Bruce is also black in the books, as, with the exception of some details about Rayford, we are never once given a description of what people actually look like. Ever. For all we know, Buck could be a drag queen, and Chloe could be a one-armed bearded lady. Hattie we at least know is blonde, as she’s described as “drop-dead gorgeous,” which clearly would not, in a book written by American fundamentalist Christians, allow her to to be anything other than the blue-eyed Aryan ideal.)
Nicolae Carpathia: Secretary General of the U.N. Antichrist. Smooth-talker.
Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig: Scientist, political adviser, and all-around smart guy. Kind of a Reed Richrads-style renaissance man with access to the highest levels of government secrets, for some reason. Also, I think he might be Jewish.
Jonathan Stonagal and Joshua Todd-Cothran: International bankers, which is basically a code word for “Jews who secretly run the world.” Nicolae’s puppetmasters. Or are they?
There’s really nothing notable about the casting in the movie, apart from the fact that Kirk Cameron stars as Buck, and, oddly enough, Cameron’s wife, actress Chelsea Noble (who met Kirk on the set of Growing Pains when she was cast as his girlfriend after Kirk had actress Julie McCullough, who had been playing his girlfriend, fired after he found out that she’d posed for Playboy), is cast in the role of Hattie. Given that Hattie eventually becomes the Whore of Babylon, it just seems like odd casting, and must have made for some awkward conversations at home:
KC: Guess what, honey? I’m going to play Buck Williams in the Left Behind Movie!
CN: That’s great, sweetheart! Is there a part for me?
KC: Of course! You’re going to play the Whore of Babylon.
CN: …
The limitations of running time necessitate that much of the story be changed in the movie. As mentioned, Rayford and Hattie’s affair is presented in a much more conventional manner. Beyond that, though, the circumstances of the principal characters meeting each other are changed dramatically, with Hattie and Buck, for example, having a pre-established friendship.
We are also treated to much shorter “long, dark night of the soul” scenes in which Rayford, Buck, and Chloe come to accept the truth of End Times prophecy, and say the magic words that, while too late to spare them from the horrors of the coming Tribulation, will at least ensure that they’re in Jesus’ good graces once he returns to run the Millennial Kingdom.
We’re also spared the truly, truly awfulstalking courting of Chloe by Buck as presented in the book, and the horrific scene in which Rayford takes his daughter along for a meeting with Hattie, his pseudo-mistress, as he attempts to make up for the shoddy manner in which he treated her prior to The Rapture and by sharing the good news of the End Times Prophecy Checklist.
(As Fred – who is himself an Evangelical Christian – over at Slacktivist so often likes to point out, the theology of Left Behind isn’t about the Good News of Jesus, or even being pro-God, it’s all about being anti-Antichrist, and letting people – select people – in on the secret words that will make Jesus like them and checking off prophesied events as they occur.)
It’s worth noting that the “heroes” of Left Behind are all, well, douchebags. This is because the whole point of the books is to vicariously say, “I told you so” to all of the world’s unbelievers, and to fantasy about how wonderful it will be to be rewarded by Jesus while all of the rest of us are burning for all eternity. If there is one central message to all of the Left Behind books and movies, it is this: Neener neener neener!
(On that note, as this is turning out to be a lot longer than expected, I’ll call this “Part One” and post it.)
Super hero comics, war comics, Archie comics, horror comics, Richie Rich comics, western comics, bicycle safety instruction comics, and even, God help me, Charlton comics: I read them all.
And I liked them.
I had such a love of the medium that I read everything I could get my hands on, and did so uncritically, believing that, simply because they were comic books they were, by default, good comic books.
Sure, I had my preferences, but in general I gladly read anything that had words and pictures and staples in the center.
As I got older, naturally, I developed a finer appreciation for what was good, and an understanding of what wasn’t, but in those early years, in many ways, it was all the same to me.
Which leads me to Left Behind.
There is pretty much no objective standard, or really even a defensible subjective standard, by which the Left Behind books, and, more to the point of this entry, the movie based on the books, can be deemed good.
It’s just not possible.
That is, of course, unless you are the books’ target audience, who, like young Jon with his uncritical mind, are incapable of seeing any flaws and love the books and movie simply because you love the medium, or, in this case, the message.
For your standard fundy fan of Left Behind, the message is all that matters. These books and movies “tell it like it is,” and considerations of quality storytelling elements like coherent plots, character development, and verisimilitude are for those heathen, unsaved intellectuals.
That lack of any semblance of critical thinking goes a long way towards explaining the otherwise inexplicable success of the books, and, more tellingly, how it is that the books’ fans came to believe the unbelievable, unpalatable, and utterly nihilistic theology that is at the center of the Left Behind series.
In any case, the point of this entry is to talk a little about the Left Behind movie and my thoughts on its quality, or, more accurately, lack thereof.
I’ll start first with a brief rundown of the story and the main characters.
At some point in the “near future,” an Israeli scientist named Dr.
Because it will piss off God, that’s why not. In a move that pretty much wipes away any doubt about His existence, God moves in to directly protect Israel from its enemies, causing the nukes to harmlessly detonate in the air, and totally eradicating the assembled Russian forces, and that one guy who served as Ethiopia’s contribution, to the assault on Israeli in a move that can only – and I stress the word only – be described as miraculous.
This utterly irrefutable proof of the existence of God is met with a combination of stifled yawns and “Gee, that was odd,” from the world at large.
Shortly thereafter, The Rapture occurs, as throughout the world true, Rapture-believing Christians, and every child below the vague and undefined “age of accountability” cut-off point, including unborn children, drop trou and vanish, leaving behind all of the sinners and the too-old children of the world, along with all of their clothes.
The movie seems to suggest that this amounts to about 130,000, 000 people total, while I believe that the book puts the number somewhere closer to a half a billion, but either number is far too low, even if we assume that the vast majority of self-identified Christians aren’t given the “Get Off of Earth Without Having to Die” card, as the children of the world alone would likely amount to a larger number.
Now, in the hands of a good writer, this could be the set up for a really thrilling and moving story that examines the impact of such a loss on those who were not taken.
In Left Behind, both the book and the movie, however, the disappearance of millions of people proves to be little more than a hiccup, and within days everything is pretty much back to normal, and the story that’s really on everyone’s mind is the selection of a new Secretary General of the United Nations, a charismatic man from Romania named Nicolae Carpathia.
The Carpathia story – Wait, are you still on about your mom and your children disappearing? Get over it; that was yesterday! What? Full-scale assault on Israel swept away by the hand of God? Who cares about that? There’s a good-looking guy taking over the U.N. – is even juicier than most people know, as it just so happens that, in addition to being charismatic, idealistic, and good-looking, Carpathia is actually the Antichrist.
So those are the basics of the story. Let’s meet the key players.
Rayford Steele: Airline pilot. Man’s man. Unsaved.
Chloe Steele: Rayford’s daughter. College student. Too smart for her own good, and, in her own words, “too blasted independent.”
Irene Steele: Rayford’s long-suffering and totally ignored prophecy-believing wife. Taken away in The Rapture.
Raymie Steele: Rayford’s son, also taken away. Called “Raymie” for no apparent reason, given that his actual name is Rayford Steele, Jr.
Cameron “Buck” Williams: Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time. 30 year-old virgin. In the book he’s a print journalist, but in the movie he’s a TV reporter.
Hattie Durham: Flight attendant. Future Whore of Babylon. In the book she was involved in this perverse non-affair with Rayford, the details of which are too gruesome to delve into here. In the movie the affair is a lot less “non,” and considerably more pedestrian, mostly, I think, for the sake of expediency.
Bruce Barnes: Visitation Pastor at Rayford and Irene’s church. He knows all about the End Times prophecies, but never actually believed in them, or said the proper magic words that would have allowed him to be Raptured away. In the book he exists largely for the purposes of exposition, as the story needs someone who knows what’s going on, but if he’d actually believed he wouldn’t be around to serve that function. In the movie his function is to be a black guy. (Note: It’s entirely possible that Bruce is also black in the books, as, with the exception of some details about Rayford, we are never once given a description of what people actually look like. Ever. For all we know, Buck could be a drag queen, and Chloe could be a one-armed bearded lady. Hattie we at least know is blonde, as she’s described as “drop-dead gorgeous,” which clearly would not, in a book written by American fundamentalist Christians, allow her to to be anything other than the blue-eyed Aryan ideal.)
Nicolae Carpathia: Secretary General of the U.N. Antichrist. Smooth-talker.
Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig: Scientist, political adviser, and all-around smart guy. Kind of a Reed Richrads-style renaissance man with access to the highest levels of government secrets, for some reason. Also, I think he might be Jewish.
Jonathan Stonagal and Joshua Todd-Cothran: International bankers, which is basically a code word for “Jews who secretly run the world.” Nicolae’s puppetmasters. Or are they?
There’s really nothing notable about the casting in the movie, apart from the fact that Kirk Cameron stars as Buck, and, oddly enough, Cameron’s wife, actress Chelsea Noble (who met Kirk on the set of Growing Pains when she was cast as his girlfriend after Kirk had actress Julie McCullough, who had been playing his girlfriend, fired after he found out that she’d posed for Playboy), is cast in the role of Hattie. Given that Hattie eventually becomes the Whore of Babylon, it just seems like odd casting, and must have made for some awkward conversations at home:
KC: Guess what, honey? I’m going to play Buck Williams in the Left Behind Movie!
CN: That’s great, sweetheart! Is there a part for me?
KC: Of course! You’re going to play the Whore of Babylon.
CN: …
The limitations of running time necessitate that much of the story be changed in the movie. As mentioned, Rayford and Hattie’s affair is presented in a much more conventional manner. Beyond that, though, the circumstances of the principal characters meeting each other are changed dramatically, with Hattie and Buck, for example, having a pre-established friendship.
We are also treated to much shorter “long, dark night of the soul” scenes in which Rayford, Buck, and Chloe come to accept the truth of End Times prophecy, and say the magic words that, while too late to spare them from the horrors of the coming Tribulation, will at least ensure that they’re in Jesus’ good graces once he returns to run the Millennial Kingdom.
We’re also spared the truly, truly awful
(As Fred – who is himself an Evangelical Christian – over at Slacktivist so often likes to point out, the theology of Left Behind isn’t about the Good News of Jesus, or even being pro-God, it’s all about being anti-Antichrist, and letting people – select people – in on the secret words that will make Jesus like them and checking off prophesied events as they occur.)
It’s worth noting that the “heroes” of Left Behind are all, well, douchebags. This is because the whole point of the books is to vicariously say, “I told you so” to all of the world’s unbelievers, and to fantasy about how wonderful it will be to be rewarded by Jesus while all of the rest of us are burning for all eternity. If there is one central message to all of the Left Behind books and movies, it is this: Neener neener neener!
(On that note, as this is turning out to be a lot longer than expected, I’ll call this “Part One” and post it.)
Thursday, June 05, 2008
"Rapture" Is The LAST Word That Comes To Mind When Watching That Movie
Why yes, I am feeling much better. Thanks for asking!
What? You didn’t ask?
Oh.
No, no, it’s fine, it’s fine.
Yeah, like I’m really going to believe that you’re actually concerned now.
No, I’m not going to tell you how much better I’m feeling. I shouldn’t have to ask you to ask me, you thoughtless, inconsiderate sons of –
*Cough*
Anyway, yeah, I’m not quite so mucus-free as I’d like to be, but I’m still considerably better in that regard that I have been in recent days.
I actually started feeling better yesterday afternoon, after the Mucinex managed to break up the congestion, and really the only thing that kept me from dragging my ass in to work was the fact that I was totally exhausted.
Evidently it wouldn’t have been a terribly productive day at work anyway, as the really severe storms that moved through NoVA yesterday knocked the power out at work and they ended up closing up shop early.
Here the power only went out for a couple of minutes; just long enough to force me to reset the pain in the ass clock on my microwave.
Prior to the storms, it was hot and muggy, with the air at a virtual standstill, forcing me to have to use my A/C, as there were no cooling breezes to make opening the windows worthwhile.
The problem, though, was that, as Scott put it, while I was getting the A part, I was not getting the C portion, as the vents were just issuing forth air that did nothing to lower the ambient temperature.
I was becoming concerned that expensive repairs were in order, but eventually I noticed that I wasn’t hearing the compressor running, so, for the hell of it, I went to the circuit breaker and flipped the A/C circuit off and back on, heard the compressor fire up, and came back in to find the cool air flowing.
So that was good.
As many of you know, one of the principle sources of joy in my life is the blog Slacktivist, and more specifically, that feature of the blog known as Left Behind Fridays.
Left Behind Fridays – or, sometimes, depending on what the author’s life and schedule outside of the blog are like, Left Behind Saturdays, or even Left Behind Tuesdays – are what we call the Fridays on which Fred Clark, the titular Slacktivist, examines a section of the Christian bestseller Left Behind, a book that details the events following The Rapture, an event that initiates the rise of the Antichrist and the beginning of that dark, seven year culmination of human history known as The Tribulation, a period during which those of us who weren’t swooped bodily – sans clothes – up into Heaven by Jesus, will suffer for our sins, and, more specifically, for our failure to say the right magic words that will bind Jesus to do our bidding.
This particular theology is based on a rather specific reading of very specific passages of the Bible using a very specific method of interpretation. While adherents to this belief insist that they believe the Bible to be “literally” true, they don’t necessarily believe that it was laid out in chronological order, so to be able to kinda sorta maybe almost find the basis for their belief – note that the word “Rapture” never actually appears in the Bible – you have to break the Bible up into different “dispensations” and do a lot of jumping around, and, you know, just ignore those parts where Jesus gets all preachy and tells you to feed the poor and love your enemies and all that other liberal hippy crap.
Anyway, you can read up on Premillennial Dispensationalism on your time.
And really, the books don’t so much detail the events that follow The Rapture as they do the telephone calls and the logistics of travel plans made by those who were left behind.
For whatever reason, I feel a kind of horrified amusement towards the beliefs of American Fundamentalist Christians (CF my obsession with Jack T. Chick), so since I first heard of the Left Behind series, I’ve kind of wanted to read the books, but could never actually bring myself to do so. Thus, finding Slacktivist, with its summations and brilliantly amusing and insightful skewering of “the worst books ever written” was, you’ll pardon the expression, a godsend.
With my constant gushing about the joys of LB Fridays, I managed to turn Scott into a loyal Slacktivite, and one day I realized that I could actually add the Left Behind movies (there are three of them) to my Netflix queue, and that he and I should get together to watch them and give them the MST3K treatment.
So yesterday evening, Scott came over and we watched the first movie.
The movies star Kirk “Growing Pains” Cameron as Cameron “Buck” Williams, the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time.
(Cameron Williams was actually so named by the books’ authors as an homage to Kirk Cameron, so there was really no one else who could play him in the movie.)
I have to say that the movie was actually substantially better than the book.
However, I also have to say that the movie was absolutely dreadful.
One of the main reasons that the movie was superior to the book was that, being a visual medium, it couldn’t adhere to the words that the book’s author appears to live by: Tell, don’t show.
I also have to believe that a lot of adjustments were made to the story because the people who made the movie, being thinking, feeling human beings, realized just how truly dreadful the “heroes” of Left Behind really are, and how monstrously inhumane the authors believe the bulk of humanity to be, and made adjustments so that real human beings who are interested in more than simply seeing items ticked off on some End Times Checklist could actually identify and sympathize with the characters.
There’s a LOT that I have to say about the movie, but I think I’ll save it for another entry – maybe we can have our own Left Behind Friday here – as I still need some time to collect my thoughts and gird my loins (I said “gird my loins”) before diving into this particular pile of excrement.
Totally unrelated aside: there was a fucking snake in my backyard! I shooed it away with a broom, but the fact remains that there was a fucking snake in my backyard!
What kind of snake, you ask? The kind of snake that is a fucking snake. It doesn’t matter what kind.
My brother Brad, whose feelings about snakes are even stronger than mine, was talking about how he saw a snake in his garage and it made him want to burn his house down. My reaction wasn’t that extreme; I just wanted to torch the backyard.
What? You didn’t ask?
Oh.
No, no, it’s fine, it’s fine.
Yeah, like I’m really going to believe that you’re actually concerned now.
No, I’m not going to tell you how much better I’m feeling. I shouldn’t have to ask you to ask me, you thoughtless, inconsiderate sons of –
*Cough*
Anyway, yeah, I’m not quite so mucus-free as I’d like to be, but I’m still considerably better in that regard that I have been in recent days.
I actually started feeling better yesterday afternoon, after the Mucinex managed to break up the congestion, and really the only thing that kept me from dragging my ass in to work was the fact that I was totally exhausted.
Evidently it wouldn’t have been a terribly productive day at work anyway, as the really severe storms that moved through NoVA yesterday knocked the power out at work and they ended up closing up shop early.
Here the power only went out for a couple of minutes; just long enough to force me to reset the pain in the ass clock on my microwave.
Prior to the storms, it was hot and muggy, with the air at a virtual standstill, forcing me to have to use my A/C, as there were no cooling breezes to make opening the windows worthwhile.
The problem, though, was that, as Scott put it, while I was getting the A part, I was not getting the C portion, as the vents were just issuing forth air that did nothing to lower the ambient temperature.
I was becoming concerned that expensive repairs were in order, but eventually I noticed that I wasn’t hearing the compressor running, so, for the hell of it, I went to the circuit breaker and flipped the A/C circuit off and back on, heard the compressor fire up, and came back in to find the cool air flowing.
So that was good.
As many of you know, one of the principle sources of joy in my life is the blog Slacktivist, and more specifically, that feature of the blog known as Left Behind Fridays.
Left Behind Fridays – or, sometimes, depending on what the author’s life and schedule outside of the blog are like, Left Behind Saturdays, or even Left Behind Tuesdays – are what we call the Fridays on which Fred Clark, the titular Slacktivist, examines a section of the Christian bestseller Left Behind, a book that details the events following The Rapture, an event that initiates the rise of the Antichrist and the beginning of that dark, seven year culmination of human history known as The Tribulation, a period during which those of us who weren’t swooped bodily – sans clothes – up into Heaven by Jesus, will suffer for our sins, and, more specifically, for our failure to say the right magic words that will bind Jesus to do our bidding.
This particular theology is based on a rather specific reading of very specific passages of the Bible using a very specific method of interpretation. While adherents to this belief insist that they believe the Bible to be “literally” true, they don’t necessarily believe that it was laid out in chronological order, so to be able to kinda sorta maybe almost find the basis for their belief – note that the word “Rapture” never actually appears in the Bible – you have to break the Bible up into different “dispensations” and do a lot of jumping around, and, you know, just ignore those parts where Jesus gets all preachy and tells you to feed the poor and love your enemies and all that other liberal hippy crap.
Anyway, you can read up on Premillennial Dispensationalism on your time.
And really, the books don’t so much detail the events that follow The Rapture as they do the telephone calls and the logistics of travel plans made by those who were left behind.
For whatever reason, I feel a kind of horrified amusement towards the beliefs of American Fundamentalist Christians (CF my obsession with Jack T. Chick), so since I first heard of the Left Behind series, I’ve kind of wanted to read the books, but could never actually bring myself to do so. Thus, finding Slacktivist, with its summations and brilliantly amusing and insightful skewering of “the worst books ever written” was, you’ll pardon the expression, a godsend.
With my constant gushing about the joys of LB Fridays, I managed to turn Scott into a loyal Slacktivite, and one day I realized that I could actually add the Left Behind movies (there are three of them) to my Netflix queue, and that he and I should get together to watch them and give them the MST3K treatment.
So yesterday evening, Scott came over and we watched the first movie.
The movies star Kirk “Growing Pains” Cameron as Cameron “Buck” Williams, the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time.
(Cameron Williams was actually so named by the books’ authors as an homage to Kirk Cameron, so there was really no one else who could play him in the movie.)
I have to say that the movie was actually substantially better than the book.
However, I also have to say that the movie was absolutely dreadful.
One of the main reasons that the movie was superior to the book was that, being a visual medium, it couldn’t adhere to the words that the book’s author appears to live by: Tell, don’t show.
I also have to believe that a lot of adjustments were made to the story because the people who made the movie, being thinking, feeling human beings, realized just how truly dreadful the “heroes” of Left Behind really are, and how monstrously inhumane the authors believe the bulk of humanity to be, and made adjustments so that real human beings who are interested in more than simply seeing items ticked off on some End Times Checklist could actually identify and sympathize with the characters.
There’s a LOT that I have to say about the movie, but I think I’ll save it for another entry – maybe we can have our own Left Behind Friday here – as I still need some time to collect my thoughts and gird my loins (I said “gird my loins”) before diving into this particular pile of excrement.
Totally unrelated aside: there was a fucking snake in my backyard! I shooed it away with a broom, but the fact remains that there was a fucking snake in my backyard!
What kind of snake, you ask? The kind of snake that is a fucking snake. It doesn’t matter what kind.
My brother Brad, whose feelings about snakes are even stronger than mine, was talking about how he saw a snake in his garage and it made him want to burn his house down. My reaction wasn’t that extreme; I just wanted to torch the backyard.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
My Butt: It Has Been Kicked
I actually had to call in sick today because this stupid cold kept me up coughing all night.
My chest doesn't so much feel congested as it feels cemented.
My ass has officially been kicked by this cold.
It doesn't help matters any that summer weather, AKA "The Swamp," has officially moved in, so you don't so much breathe air as you drink it.
I hate being sick, which is why I've spent so much time refusing to do so, but lately sickness just doesn't seem to want to take no for an answer.
My chest doesn't so much feel congested as it feels cemented.
My ass has officially been kicked by this cold.
It doesn't help matters any that summer weather, AKA "The Swamp," has officially moved in, so you don't so much breathe air as you drink it.
I hate being sick, which is why I've spent so much time refusing to do so, but lately sickness just doesn't seem to want to take no for an answer.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Travelogue Tidbits
There were a couple of things I meant to mention but forgot in my lengthy post about my trip home, so, lacking anything more interesting to write about, I’m mentioning them now.
I was flying into Chicago at night when my iPod shuffled to the Liz Phair song Stratford-On-Guy, which starts out with the line “I was flying into Chicago at night.”
The coincidence amused me much more than it probably should have.
Male flight attendants, I learned, appear to be frustrated stand up comics who like to take advantage of the fact that they have captive audiences when making in-flight announcements. The problem is that they’re not funny. I understand that it must be monotonous to have to say the same things over and over again, but that’s no reason to take it out on us. We’re already suffering, and don’t need to have your “funny” voices or endless bread-related puns added to our misery.
In Indianapolis, on my way to Michigan, I saw a woman in a skintight black dress, a white jacket, and sexy black and white patent leather pumps that gave off the impression of some kind of retro 1950s pin-up. It was a really good look on her…twenty years and forty pounds ago.
The sight of it inspired me to create this cruel and probably misogynistic image:
Yes, yes, I know; I’m no prize pig myself, but on the other hand I don’t go around dressing as though I think I am, do I? In fact, if anything I dress to accentuate the fact that I know that I’m not.
I was going to just use an image of some random MILF-wannabe, but with Sex & The City being the number one movie in the country, this seemed more appropriate.
(And for the record, Kristin Davis? Still smoking hot, and way hotter than any of the others were even in their prime.)
After I bought a sandwich from Subway, the only source of food in the concourse I was on, I was looking for a place to sit and eat in the overcrowded seating area and noted that the woman in the tight black dress – who, unlike the ladies of S&TC, did not have the benefit of make-up artists and soft focus – was looking up at me rather expectantly from her table. I said, “Do you mind if I sit here?”
To some guy sitting at a different table.
I was flying into Chicago at night when my iPod shuffled to the Liz Phair song Stratford-On-Guy, which starts out with the line “I was flying into Chicago at night.”
The coincidence amused me much more than it probably should have.
Male flight attendants, I learned, appear to be frustrated stand up comics who like to take advantage of the fact that they have captive audiences when making in-flight announcements. The problem is that they’re not funny. I understand that it must be monotonous to have to say the same things over and over again, but that’s no reason to take it out on us. We’re already suffering, and don’t need to have your “funny” voices or endless bread-related puns added to our misery.
In Indianapolis, on my way to Michigan, I saw a woman in a skintight black dress, a white jacket, and sexy black and white patent leather pumps that gave off the impression of some kind of retro 1950s pin-up. It was a really good look on her…twenty years and forty pounds ago.
The sight of it inspired me to create this cruel and probably misogynistic image:
Yes, yes, I know; I’m no prize pig myself, but on the other hand I don’t go around dressing as though I think I am, do I? In fact, if anything I dress to accentuate the fact that I know that I’m not.
I was going to just use an image of some random MILF-wannabe, but with Sex & The City being the number one movie in the country, this seemed more appropriate.
(And for the record, Kristin Davis? Still smoking hot, and way hotter than any of the others were even in their prime.)
After I bought a sandwich from Subway, the only source of food in the concourse I was on, I was looking for a place to sit and eat in the overcrowded seating area and noted that the woman in the tight black dress – who, unlike the ladies of S&TC, did not have the benefit of make-up artists and soft focus – was looking up at me rather expectantly from her table. I said, “Do you mind if I sit here?”
To some guy sitting at a different table.
Cold Snore
This morning when I got up, my chest didn't hurt and my nostrils were reasonably clear, so I thought that my cold was finally gone.
Turns out it was just in hiding, waiting to jump out and surprise me as the day wore on.
Since I've had the cold, I've been having experiences while lying in bed that go something like this:
Me: Hmm...something doesn't seem right. Shouldn't I be breathing?
*GASP!*
It's exactly as fun as it sounds.
Turns out it was just in hiding, waiting to jump out and surprise me as the day wore on.
Since I've had the cold, I've been having experiences while lying in bed that go something like this:
Me: Hmm...something doesn't seem right. Shouldn't I be breathing?
*GASP!*
It's exactly as fun as it sounds.
Monday, June 02, 2008
At Least Three Times More Hateful
I didn't sleep very well last night, and my head cold, which had moved to my chest over the weekend, decided to move back into my head today, before finally deciding to take up dual residence.
The tiredness and the cold, I found, upon arriving at work, combined forces in order to make the fact of the existence of other human beings at least three times more hateful to me than usual.
So, yeah. Not a great day.
I came home and dozed on the couch for a while, then dozed in bed for a while, then got up after about 45 minutes.
I had a picture that I started last night that I wanted to work on, but the words "screw" and "that" kept popping up in my head whenever I thought about working on it.
I would just go to bed now, but experience has taught me that when I go to bed early I invariably end up finally falling asleep well after the time I would if I'd gone to bed at the normal time, so I'm hanging in there as long as I can.
And that pretty much sums up my day.
The tiredness and the cold, I found, upon arriving at work, combined forces in order to make the fact of the existence of other human beings at least three times more hateful to me than usual.
So, yeah. Not a great day.
I came home and dozed on the couch for a while, then dozed in bed for a while, then got up after about 45 minutes.
I had a picture that I started last night that I wanted to work on, but the words "screw" and "that" kept popping up in my head whenever I thought about working on it.
I would just go to bed now, but experience has taught me that when I go to bed early I invariably end up finally falling asleep well after the time I would if I'd gone to bed at the normal time, so I'm hanging in there as long as I can.
And that pretty much sums up my day.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Don't Close Your Eyes
In my previous entry I referred to the “nice place to visit” expression.
There’s a variant on that expression that I often use: My brain isn’t even a nice place to visit, and I have to live there.
Among the many, many reasons I say this is that whenever I close my eyes I usually see very strange things.
I don’t think this is terribly uncommon, and it may be that the things I see aren’t all that unique in their weirdness, but hey, this is my blog.
Anyway, in pissing away my day, I decided to try to capture a couple of the more recent visions that have appeared before my mind’s eye and share the results with you.
Make of them what you will.
I have no idea what this is. Some kind of…gunk, I guess, with little pieces of candy stuck in it. Your guess is as good as mine.
This one is very obviously influenced by the work of Kirby (and to some extent, Cooke), though what it is, exactly, is beyond me.
(Oh, and that’s only “obviously” if you know who Kirby and Cooke are.)
So what do they mean? No idea.
If you were to suggest that they mean that I have some sort of mental problems, I would respond, like Otto on The Simpsons when Lisa tells him that he’s only joining the Navy because he’s been brainwashed by subliminal messages, with, “Yeah, probably.”
There’s a variant on that expression that I often use: My brain isn’t even a nice place to visit, and I have to live there.
Among the many, many reasons I say this is that whenever I close my eyes I usually see very strange things.
I don’t think this is terribly uncommon, and it may be that the things I see aren’t all that unique in their weirdness, but hey, this is my blog.
Anyway, in pissing away my day, I decided to try to capture a couple of the more recent visions that have appeared before my mind’s eye and share the results with you.
Make of them what you will.
I have no idea what this is. Some kind of…gunk, I guess, with little pieces of candy stuck in it. Your guess is as good as mine.
This one is very obviously influenced by the work of Kirby (and to some extent, Cooke), though what it is, exactly, is beyond me.
(Oh, and that’s only “obviously” if you know who Kirby and Cooke are.)
So what do they mean? No idea.
If you were to suggest that they mean that I have some sort of mental problems, I would respond, like Otto on The Simpsons when Lisa tells him that he’s only joining the Navy because he’s been brainwashed by subliminal messages, with, “Yeah, probably.”
Travelong...Err, I Mean "Travelogue"
Okay, we’ve finally reached the moment that no one has been waiting for: the time to write a detailed entry about my trip home to Michigan.
I had been talking to someone at work about the UP and how small it is, and I threw out a guess as to the total population. Later, I checked out the Wikipedia entry and discovered that I had overestimated by about 20,000.
I further learned that while the UP comprises nearly one third of the total land mass of the state, it only contains about three percent of the total population.
Flying out of Dulles, the thought occurred to me that going back home is like taking a trip into the past using a defective time machine that actually deposits you in some alternate timeline in which things are mostly the same, but not quite how you remember them.
This is to say that while I’m away some things change, but for the most part things, and in particular people, stay the same.
In any case, after meeting up with Brad in Minneapolis, we made our way to Hancock via one of the standard “puddle jumper” prop planes.
The flight attendant was surprisingly cute, and as I sat in the aisle seat – airplane seating is the one place in the world where I feel like I’m a really big person – her hips kept bumping my arm and shoulder every time she went past. I can tell you that she was very firm and toned, though I’m sure she was black and blue by the end of the flight.
When we arrived at the airport it became clear that this was her first flight to the UP, as she made several references to the jetway.
Not in the UP, sister; we just take the stairs down and walk to the terminal in the open air. Said air being about thirty degrees cooler than the air in Virginia, and fifty degrees cooler than the air in Texas where my brother lives.
Brad had agreed to pay for the rental car, as there was no point in us both renting a car, and the site he booked it through said that the rental desk actually closes at 6 PM. He’d rescheduled the pick up for the next day, as we were arriving after 11 PM, and Jourdan had driven up, with my mom, to get us.
Turns out the travel site has erroneous information, and the rental desk was open, so Brad was able to get the car that night.
My mom rode back to her place with Brad, and I rode with Jourdan to keep her company. I found it kind of funny that she drives the same kind of car as Kathleen, so I was dropped off at one airport in a Kia Sportage, and picked up from another in a Kia Sportage.
After staying up and visiting for a few hours, we decided to crash, and I learned that my mom’s couch is not ideally suited for sleeping on (Brad got the spare bedroom). My mom offered to sleep on the couch and let me take her bed, but seriously, what kind of son would make his mom sleep on the couch? Well, I’m not sure of the answer to that, other than that it’s not the kind of son I am.
Friday morning my mom made breakfast, and after we all got ready we got in the car and stopped by to visit my sister Kim at work. Then we headed out to Winona so that my mom could put flowers on the Katajamaki family plot, where my grandparents, aunt, and uncle are buried. My dad, as you may recall, was cremated, and so is not buried there.
(I’ve probably mentioned this before, but Maki is only part of a traditional Finnish family name. There’s usually some descriptive prefix – Kataja, in the case of my family – that precedes it. A lot of Finns dropped the prefix upon arrival in America – and some went the extra mile, dropping the prefix and taking the English word for Maki, which is “Hill,” as their last name. Not so with my family, until my grandparents had kids and chose to name them simply Maki. This is why my paternal grandparents had a different last name from mine. There are all kinds of Makis in the UP, all of whom had in the past been some different kind of Maki, like, for example, Leppamaki, or Palomaki, or Rintamaki. The dropped prefix is why there are so many Makis around yet most of them aren’t actually related to each other. As an aside, at various times I’ve had people misunderstand me when I’ve said that my name is Jon-Paul Maki, thinking that I’d said my name was Jon Palomaki. And of course there’s the old joke: What do you call a Finnish prostitute? Rentamaki.)
We were going to have lunch at the hotel/restaurant in Twin Lakes, but decided to head to the Chinese buffet place in Houghton, where I received the following fortune: A short stranger will soon enter your life with blessings to share.
Given my predilection for petite women, this works really well with the whole “in bed” thing.
We also stopped by the cemetery where my mom’s parents are buried so she could put flowers there (after we managed to remember where their graves are).
Later in the afternoon we went over to Kim’s house to visit for a while, and then the lot of us went out to have dinner at Pizza Hut.
From there, my mom, Brad, and I went to the casino, where I won $40 pretty early on, but eventually ended up giving it all (and more) back.
On Saturday there was an open house for these “luxury condos” that had been built right next to the bridge on the Hancock side. And I mean, right next to it.
We’d decided to check them out just to see what they were like. For what they were asking, the condos were not impressive, having virtually nothing in the way of high-end features, and no amenities apart from a heated parking garage. Apparently the developers expect people to pay all of that money for the view, which is impressive…if you like watching cars going by constantly.
We had a late lunch at the Kaleva Café, a place that derives its name from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. Most people pronounce it Ka-LEE-vuh, though it would more properly be pronounced “KULL-uh-VUH.”
The thing about small town restaurants is the service is always great. The wait staff is always friendly, cheerful, and solicitous.
Except, you know, when they aren’t, which was the case at the Kaleva. The waitress – eventually – came to our table, plopped the menus down, stared at us in silence until we gave her our drink orders, then stomped off. She didn’t get any friendlier from there.
However, and this ties in with my aside about my last name, the one bright spot was seeing this on the menu:
I, of course, couldn’t not order it.
It was essentially just a Big Mac knock-off (apparently there’s also a breakfast sandwich called the Egg McMaki), and wasn’t too bad, though it was pretty messy. Somehow that seems appropriate.
In the afternoon we went to a graduation party for some relative that I don’t know, which was as exciting as it sounds.
That evening, after eating at KFC, we headed to the casino again.
At KFC we used some coupons, and mine said that I could get potato wedges or any individual side. When I asked for cole slaw, the girl said, “Unless it says otherwise you have to get the potato wedges.” I pointed out the “individual sides” thing and said, jokingly, “Don’t argue with me! I’ve done my homework.”
At the casino I lost early and lost often, until I was down to my last $20, at which point I won about $100, which brought me somewhere past the break even point.
Normally I stick to your standard quarter slots, eschewing table games (too many people to deal with), and those fancy penny, two penny, and nickel machines with all of their wackiness and confusing forty-five line games and bonuses and whatnot, though given the popularity of the wacky games it can be difficult to find straightforward slots.
Some of the slots, I learned the hard way, allow you to choose how much a credit is worth, and generally default to $1. I went through several turns on one, playing three credits at a time and assuming that I was only playing seventy-five cents at a pop, before realizing that I was giving it $3 each time.
Brad likes to play roulette, and after having watched him play both nights, I decided to give it a shot. I was actually doing pretty well, but by the time I started playing we were getting ready to leave. Still, I started out with $20 worth of chips and ended up walking away with $55. So not bad.
Sunday was the graduation party, and despite the forecast, we ended up having a pretty nice day. It was actually pretty hot, though sometime in the afternoon the sun went away and the wind kicked up and the temperature dropped at least ten degrees.
By that time the party had dwindled down to just family, though eventually a few other people showed up, and many of those assembled started playing drinking games. I never saw the appeal of drinking games, really. I mean, for me, the only game I needed to play when I drank was the one in which I grabbed a beer and drank it. I won every time.
Beer was running low by the time my mom got tired and I brought her home, so, being the only sober one besides Kim, and venturing out into the world anyway, I was elected beer bitch. I stopped at a Citgo on the way to my mom’s place, but it was closed. The only other place that sold beer that was still opened was the Wal-Mart Super Center, so I headed there after dropping my mom off.
I was standing in line behind this young black guy whose shorts were hanging all the way down past his ass. I didn’t really think anything of it – or even notice, really – until this girl in another line said, “Excuse me. Your shorts are falling down.” He responded, a little annoyed, “I know. That’s how I want them,” though he did actually pull them up.
She said, “Oh,” and shook her head in disbelief, laughing with a sort of shocked bewilderment.
She and I were leaving the store at about the same time, so I said, to her, “Were you just being a smart ass with the shorts comment?”
Her response was that she’d “never seen anything like it,” and when I told her that it’s pretty common, she said, “Well, I guess I just wasn’t raised that way.”
I can pretty much guarantee that she was an Apostolic Lutheran – live around them long enough and you can tell just by looking at them, though when they’re with their families of 12+ children it becomes even easier to spot them – but even so, the fact that she was so dismayed by the baggy pants thing is just baffling. I mean, how sheltered a life do you have to live to have never seen that before? Even in the UP, dressing like that has been pretty common for at least fifteen years.
When I returned with the beer my sister Kristy commented upon discovering that I had the foresight to buy cold beer that at least I remembered that much about drinking.
Kim works for a Pepsi distributor, so she’d set up a portable soda fountain outside for the party. Venturing out to get myself some Sierra Mist, one of Jeremy’s friends, who’d arrived in my absence said, “There better be Jack Daniels in there.”
Deciding against a more appropriate response of “Blow me,” I simply said “Nope.”
At this point, Jeremy said, “This is my Uncle Jon, by the way.”
Eventually, wanting to avoid lengthy, beery farewells, Brad and I managed to sneak out sometime around 1 AM.
Monday morning the coldness that had moved in Sunday evening decided to stick around.
Brad and I went to Perkins for breakfast. The place was packed, as it was apparently the only restaurant open, a fact which, when scheduling staff for the day, management hadn’t counted on, so they were seriously understaffed, and the whole process took longer than it ought to have.
When we got back to my mom’s place we spotted our brother-in-law Ken loading up a chair that my mom was giving to him and Kristy – my mom didn’t come to breakfast because she was waiting for Kristy, Ken, and Todd, who’d spent the night at Kim’s, to stop by – and I noticed that it was actually snowing.
Nothing stuck, but there were definitely flakes falling.
That afternoon we went to see the latest Indiana Jones movie, which was entertaining (you can read Scott’s review if you haven’t seen it and are interested), and after eating dinner at my mom’s we went over to Kim’s to visit for a while and say our goodbyes.
That evening my mom’s friend Kathy stopped by and visited for a while, and, eventually, as I had to get up early in the morning, it was time to turn in.
And that was pretty much my trip. I’ve already given you the gory details of my long and horrifically boring return to Virginia, so that pretty much covers it.
Of my family, Brad and I are the only ones who live outside of the UP, so at various times throughout our stay there we each had to field the question, from assorted people, of when we plan to move back.
We both responded with some variation of “Well, ‘never’ has a pretty nice ring to it.”
After all, both of us left for a reason, not the least of which is that the fact that it snowed on freakin’ Memorial Day is not exactly an uncommon occurrence and is barely noteworthy.
I’m the first to admit that it’s a beautiful area – at least for a couple months out of the year, though sometimes, on a really good day, even the snow and cold can have a sort of harsh appeal – but there’s just nothing there.
There are so many people who sing the praises of small town life, elevating it to near-heavenly status, but I’m of the opinion that the people who do so either never actually lived in a small town, have their memories too clouded by nostalgia to remember what it was actually like, or had life experiences so vastly different from mine that there is simply no way in which we can find common ground.
Going to the mall, for example, was like seeing the opening scenes of some documentary about the devastating effects that a plant closure has had on a community, and it’s always like that, and has always been like that. It’s bleak and it’s depressing and there’s just no vitality to the area, and I could not, for the life of me, find a reason to stay.
I don’t mean to fault the people who do stay – though I’m at a loss to understand the people who leave and return – and I’m not looking down my nose at the place or the people (well, maybe I’m looking down my nose at some of the people), but I did my time there. It’s done, and the whole place is pretty much the quintessence of the expression “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” More to the point, I didn’t want to live there.
So, yeah. That’s a big “no” on moving back.
But I do love my family, and I miss them, so the annual visits home will continue to be a tradition for a long time to come.
This particular visit seemed extremely short, though, especially with the late arrival and early departure eating up a fair amount of the available time. So the next trip will require better planning and time management.
But anyway, there you have it. I went, I saw, I left. It’s not exactly veni, vidi, vici, but then I’m not exactly Caesar.
I had been talking to someone at work about the UP and how small it is, and I threw out a guess as to the total population. Later, I checked out the Wikipedia entry and discovered that I had overestimated by about 20,000.
I further learned that while the UP comprises nearly one third of the total land mass of the state, it only contains about three percent of the total population.
Flying out of Dulles, the thought occurred to me that going back home is like taking a trip into the past using a defective time machine that actually deposits you in some alternate timeline in which things are mostly the same, but not quite how you remember them.
This is to say that while I’m away some things change, but for the most part things, and in particular people, stay the same.
In any case, after meeting up with Brad in Minneapolis, we made our way to Hancock via one of the standard “puddle jumper” prop planes.
The flight attendant was surprisingly cute, and as I sat in the aisle seat – airplane seating is the one place in the world where I feel like I’m a really big person – her hips kept bumping my arm and shoulder every time she went past. I can tell you that she was very firm and toned, though I’m sure she was black and blue by the end of the flight.
When we arrived at the airport it became clear that this was her first flight to the UP, as she made several references to the jetway.
Not in the UP, sister; we just take the stairs down and walk to the terminal in the open air. Said air being about thirty degrees cooler than the air in Virginia, and fifty degrees cooler than the air in Texas where my brother lives.
Brad had agreed to pay for the rental car, as there was no point in us both renting a car, and the site he booked it through said that the rental desk actually closes at 6 PM. He’d rescheduled the pick up for the next day, as we were arriving after 11 PM, and Jourdan had driven up, with my mom, to get us.
Turns out the travel site has erroneous information, and the rental desk was open, so Brad was able to get the car that night.
My mom rode back to her place with Brad, and I rode with Jourdan to keep her company. I found it kind of funny that she drives the same kind of car as Kathleen, so I was dropped off at one airport in a Kia Sportage, and picked up from another in a Kia Sportage.
After staying up and visiting for a few hours, we decided to crash, and I learned that my mom’s couch is not ideally suited for sleeping on (Brad got the spare bedroom). My mom offered to sleep on the couch and let me take her bed, but seriously, what kind of son would make his mom sleep on the couch? Well, I’m not sure of the answer to that, other than that it’s not the kind of son I am.
Friday morning my mom made breakfast, and after we all got ready we got in the car and stopped by to visit my sister Kim at work. Then we headed out to Winona so that my mom could put flowers on the Katajamaki family plot, where my grandparents, aunt, and uncle are buried. My dad, as you may recall, was cremated, and so is not buried there.
(I’ve probably mentioned this before, but Maki is only part of a traditional Finnish family name. There’s usually some descriptive prefix – Kataja, in the case of my family – that precedes it. A lot of Finns dropped the prefix upon arrival in America – and some went the extra mile, dropping the prefix and taking the English word for Maki, which is “Hill,” as their last name. Not so with my family, until my grandparents had kids and chose to name them simply Maki. This is why my paternal grandparents had a different last name from mine. There are all kinds of Makis in the UP, all of whom had in the past been some different kind of Maki, like, for example, Leppamaki, or Palomaki, or Rintamaki. The dropped prefix is why there are so many Makis around yet most of them aren’t actually related to each other. As an aside, at various times I’ve had people misunderstand me when I’ve said that my name is Jon-Paul Maki, thinking that I’d said my name was Jon Palomaki. And of course there’s the old joke: What do you call a Finnish prostitute? Rentamaki.)
We were going to have lunch at the hotel/restaurant in Twin Lakes, but decided to head to the Chinese buffet place in Houghton, where I received the following fortune: A short stranger will soon enter your life with blessings to share.
Given my predilection for petite women, this works really well with the whole “in bed” thing.
We also stopped by the cemetery where my mom’s parents are buried so she could put flowers there (after we managed to remember where their graves are).
Later in the afternoon we went over to Kim’s house to visit for a while, and then the lot of us went out to have dinner at Pizza Hut.
From there, my mom, Brad, and I went to the casino, where I won $40 pretty early on, but eventually ended up giving it all (and more) back.
On Saturday there was an open house for these “luxury condos” that had been built right next to the bridge on the Hancock side. And I mean, right next to it.
We’d decided to check them out just to see what they were like. For what they were asking, the condos were not impressive, having virtually nothing in the way of high-end features, and no amenities apart from a heated parking garage. Apparently the developers expect people to pay all of that money for the view, which is impressive…if you like watching cars going by constantly.
We had a late lunch at the Kaleva Café, a place that derives its name from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. Most people pronounce it Ka-LEE-vuh, though it would more properly be pronounced “KULL-uh-VUH.”
The thing about small town restaurants is the service is always great. The wait staff is always friendly, cheerful, and solicitous.
Except, you know, when they aren’t, which was the case at the Kaleva. The waitress – eventually – came to our table, plopped the menus down, stared at us in silence until we gave her our drink orders, then stomped off. She didn’t get any friendlier from there.
However, and this ties in with my aside about my last name, the one bright spot was seeing this on the menu:
I, of course, couldn’t not order it.
It was essentially just a Big Mac knock-off (apparently there’s also a breakfast sandwich called the Egg McMaki), and wasn’t too bad, though it was pretty messy. Somehow that seems appropriate.
In the afternoon we went to a graduation party for some relative that I don’t know, which was as exciting as it sounds.
That evening, after eating at KFC, we headed to the casino again.
At KFC we used some coupons, and mine said that I could get potato wedges or any individual side. When I asked for cole slaw, the girl said, “Unless it says otherwise you have to get the potato wedges.” I pointed out the “individual sides” thing and said, jokingly, “Don’t argue with me! I’ve done my homework.”
At the casino I lost early and lost often, until I was down to my last $20, at which point I won about $100, which brought me somewhere past the break even point.
Normally I stick to your standard quarter slots, eschewing table games (too many people to deal with), and those fancy penny, two penny, and nickel machines with all of their wackiness and confusing forty-five line games and bonuses and whatnot, though given the popularity of the wacky games it can be difficult to find straightforward slots.
Some of the slots, I learned the hard way, allow you to choose how much a credit is worth, and generally default to $1. I went through several turns on one, playing three credits at a time and assuming that I was only playing seventy-five cents at a pop, before realizing that I was giving it $3 each time.
Brad likes to play roulette, and after having watched him play both nights, I decided to give it a shot. I was actually doing pretty well, but by the time I started playing we were getting ready to leave. Still, I started out with $20 worth of chips and ended up walking away with $55. So not bad.
Sunday was the graduation party, and despite the forecast, we ended up having a pretty nice day. It was actually pretty hot, though sometime in the afternoon the sun went away and the wind kicked up and the temperature dropped at least ten degrees.
By that time the party had dwindled down to just family, though eventually a few other people showed up, and many of those assembled started playing drinking games. I never saw the appeal of drinking games, really. I mean, for me, the only game I needed to play when I drank was the one in which I grabbed a beer and drank it. I won every time.
Beer was running low by the time my mom got tired and I brought her home, so, being the only sober one besides Kim, and venturing out into the world anyway, I was elected beer bitch. I stopped at a Citgo on the way to my mom’s place, but it was closed. The only other place that sold beer that was still opened was the Wal-Mart Super Center, so I headed there after dropping my mom off.
I was standing in line behind this young black guy whose shorts were hanging all the way down past his ass. I didn’t really think anything of it – or even notice, really – until this girl in another line said, “Excuse me. Your shorts are falling down.” He responded, a little annoyed, “I know. That’s how I want them,” though he did actually pull them up.
She said, “Oh,” and shook her head in disbelief, laughing with a sort of shocked bewilderment.
She and I were leaving the store at about the same time, so I said, to her, “Were you just being a smart ass with the shorts comment?”
Her response was that she’d “never seen anything like it,” and when I told her that it’s pretty common, she said, “Well, I guess I just wasn’t raised that way.”
I can pretty much guarantee that she was an Apostolic Lutheran – live around them long enough and you can tell just by looking at them, though when they’re with their families of 12+ children it becomes even easier to spot them – but even so, the fact that she was so dismayed by the baggy pants thing is just baffling. I mean, how sheltered a life do you have to live to have never seen that before? Even in the UP, dressing like that has been pretty common for at least fifteen years.
When I returned with the beer my sister Kristy commented upon discovering that I had the foresight to buy cold beer that at least I remembered that much about drinking.
Kim works for a Pepsi distributor, so she’d set up a portable soda fountain outside for the party. Venturing out to get myself some Sierra Mist, one of Jeremy’s friends, who’d arrived in my absence said, “There better be Jack Daniels in there.”
Deciding against a more appropriate response of “Blow me,” I simply said “Nope.”
At this point, Jeremy said, “This is my Uncle Jon, by the way.”
Eventually, wanting to avoid lengthy, beery farewells, Brad and I managed to sneak out sometime around 1 AM.
Monday morning the coldness that had moved in Sunday evening decided to stick around.
Brad and I went to Perkins for breakfast. The place was packed, as it was apparently the only restaurant open, a fact which, when scheduling staff for the day, management hadn’t counted on, so they were seriously understaffed, and the whole process took longer than it ought to have.
When we got back to my mom’s place we spotted our brother-in-law Ken loading up a chair that my mom was giving to him and Kristy – my mom didn’t come to breakfast because she was waiting for Kristy, Ken, and Todd, who’d spent the night at Kim’s, to stop by – and I noticed that it was actually snowing.
Nothing stuck, but there were definitely flakes falling.
That afternoon we went to see the latest Indiana Jones movie, which was entertaining (you can read Scott’s review if you haven’t seen it and are interested), and after eating dinner at my mom’s we went over to Kim’s to visit for a while and say our goodbyes.
That evening my mom’s friend Kathy stopped by and visited for a while, and, eventually, as I had to get up early in the morning, it was time to turn in.
And that was pretty much my trip. I’ve already given you the gory details of my long and horrifically boring return to Virginia, so that pretty much covers it.
Of my family, Brad and I are the only ones who live outside of the UP, so at various times throughout our stay there we each had to field the question, from assorted people, of when we plan to move back.
We both responded with some variation of “Well, ‘never’ has a pretty nice ring to it.”
After all, both of us left for a reason, not the least of which is that the fact that it snowed on freakin’ Memorial Day is not exactly an uncommon occurrence and is barely noteworthy.
I’m the first to admit that it’s a beautiful area – at least for a couple months out of the year, though sometimes, on a really good day, even the snow and cold can have a sort of harsh appeal – but there’s just nothing there.
There are so many people who sing the praises of small town life, elevating it to near-heavenly status, but I’m of the opinion that the people who do so either never actually lived in a small town, have their memories too clouded by nostalgia to remember what it was actually like, or had life experiences so vastly different from mine that there is simply no way in which we can find common ground.
Going to the mall, for example, was like seeing the opening scenes of some documentary about the devastating effects that a plant closure has had on a community, and it’s always like that, and has always been like that. It’s bleak and it’s depressing and there’s just no vitality to the area, and I could not, for the life of me, find a reason to stay.
I don’t mean to fault the people who do stay – though I’m at a loss to understand the people who leave and return – and I’m not looking down my nose at the place or the people (well, maybe I’m looking down my nose at some of the people), but I did my time there. It’s done, and the whole place is pretty much the quintessence of the expression “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” More to the point, I didn’t want to live there.
So, yeah. That’s a big “no” on moving back.
But I do love my family, and I miss them, so the annual visits home will continue to be a tradition for a long time to come.
This particular visit seemed extremely short, though, especially with the late arrival and early departure eating up a fair amount of the available time. So the next trip will require better planning and time management.
But anyway, there you have it. I went, I saw, I left. It’s not exactly veni, vidi, vici, but then I’m not exactly Caesar.
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