I feel like I was a little premature in writing about Indiana Jones 5 last weekend because if I'd just had a little patience, I would have waited for the trailer to come out and give me more to work with. Now it's out and I think I'll go ahead and analyze it. I've never analyzed a trailer before and I don't expect to do so as skillfully as the YouTube channels dedicated to that sort of thing, but I think it will be fun. For me, at least. I can't promise it will be fun to read. Everything here is either my own speculation or information from official channels. I have no desire to ruin the movie for myself. Director James Mangold did see fit the other day to debunk one particularly stupid internet rumor from mouth-breathing misogynists who claim that Indiana Jones will use time travel to erase himself from existence so his goddaughter can take over the role. This is particularly stupid because he's seventy years old and could just, you know, retire, at which point I would have no objection to his goddaughter taking over the role and starring in additional movies that would at best be great and at worst fail to ruin the great movies that already exist. Good grief. So here's the trailer on YouTube, but it looks much better on Disney+. The first four Indiana Jones movies aren't on Disney+ because Paramount still owns the distribution rights, but fear not, that will be moot in the near future when Disney buys Paramount. In the meantime I suppose this will be the only movie that doesn't open with the Paramount logo dissolving into a real mountain or a mountain etched onto a gong or a CGI prairie dog hill. First things first: I'm not crazy about the title, which was already rumored and is now confirmed. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. As much as I appreciate alliteration, I just don't think it conveys the proper sense of scope and awe for an Indiana Jones movie, especially one that's meant to cap off the franchise. Across the titles we have an ark, a temple, a crusade, a kingdom, and now... a dial. But whatever; the title won't make or break it. Visually, I think it looks great and I can tell it will be a thrill to watch even if the plot and the dialogue and the acting suck. Some of the CGI looks a bit dodgy, but with seven months left until release I'm sure it will be finessed further. Most of the cinematography and effects of the movies from the eighties still hold up and feel timeless while I'm watching them, but then the cinematography and effects here are still a vast improvement, more visually interesting with more kinetic energy. This particularly stands out in the shots set closer to the timeframe of the originals - but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The trailer opens with a voiceover from Sallah reminiscing about the desert and the sea, and we see shots of the desert and the sea. He didn't do anything with the sea in his original movies but it's implied here that he had several more adventures with Indy. He had some in the books and comics, of course. I don't know how seriously Disney is taking the tie-in materials. It didn't explicitly purge them from canon like it did with Star Wars. Some of them contradict each other, of course, but unlike the contradictions in the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, I like that because it contributes to the feeling of Indy as a larger than life, almost mythical character. Anyway, the desert shots show a bit of a chase sequence including Indy and his goddaughter Helena and some other people, and then there's a shot of him in New York City (actually Glasgow in costume) even though Sallah doesn't mention missing the city, and then there's a rearview closeup on a couple of divers (probably Indy and Helena) and then an old barnacle-encrusted skeleton is destroyed by some eels swimming out of its mouth. Will eels be the creepy crawlies of this movie? Granted, they neither creep nor crawl, but they're basically underwater snakes, which could present some entertaining possibilities. Sallah keeps talking and makes it sound like he used to go on an adventure with Indy every day. That's a bit much. I didn't see him in India (actually Sri Lanka in costume) in 1935. Indy's in a classroom lecturing students about some kind of alien spacecraft or diving bell, and it's a nice little lecture hall with rising seats, nicer than his previous classrooms, but this is 1969 and he's old and his students, far removed from the days when they would write "Love You" on their eyelids, probably think he's, like, not a groovy cat at all, man. Then Indy and Helena walk over a bridge in a cave and look down at the outstretched hand of a statue. Then all of a sudden it's 1944 and a couple of Nazis - okay, really they're just German soldiers who may or may not be formally affiliated with the Nazi Party, but at best they're Nazi enablers and that's bad enough - are dragging a prisoner with a bag over his head while a castle explodes behind them. Who could it be?? Then a wide shot of someone running across the top of a train on a foggy night. Who could it be?? Then a rear view of a motorcycle approaching a parked plane in the rain in the dark. Who could it be?? A lot of build up here. If the shots weren't so quick, the suspense would be unbearable. Someone walks between the shelves of what looks like a museum storage room, and fortunately he comes into the light so we can see that he's none other than Indiana freakin' Jones! Now the trailer does the clever trailer trick where it switches from a voiceover over a bunch of different shots to the actual scene that the voiceover is coming from. We see Dr. Jones up close and personal for the first time since he turned seventy (actually eighty in costume) talking to Sallah in front of what appears to be an airport. Sallah is once again played by John Rhys-Davies. Nowadays casting a Caucasian British man as an Egyptian would probably be frowned upon, but he's been grandfathered into the role. Indy says to him, "Those days have come and gone." He turns away and starts walking toward the airport. Sallah says, "Perhaps - perhaps not." Indy, apparently just waiting for the flimsiest pretext to persuade him to do what he really wanted to do anyway, stops, turns back, and manages a bit of a smile as the scene fades out. Mic drop. Here we see clear evidence of James Mangold's script revisions. Originally, aside from a few jokes it didn't address Indy's age or how he's become obsolete in a changing world. It was just another adventure and didn't serve to cap off his career as neatly as it could have. James Mangold may have fixed that - or he may have been too heavy-handed with the idea. These brief snippets of dialogue seem kind of heavy-handed. But eh, at least they weren't written by George Lucas. Then old Indy shines his flashlight on a statue that kind of looks Greek except that it has arms and isn't naked. Then young Indy and his assistant played by Toby Jones stand atop the train and brace themselves as a Nazi emerges from the fog, but we don't get a good look at them yet. Then we get our first closeup shot of Helena, looking concerned about something as she runs to the edge of something in New York City. I actually don't watch a lot of the movies that normal people watch, so I still associate Phoebe Waller-Bridge with a woke robot that makes weird innuendos, and I hope this character will be completely different. Now, holy crap, the guy with the bag over his head is tied to a chair that appears to be inside the castle (before it exploded?) and someone takes the bag off and HOLY CRAP IT'S LIKE HARRISON FORD TIME TRAVELED! The de-aging looks phenomenal, at least in the brief glimpses we get here. Some people are concerned that he'll still move like an eighty-year-old man, but I don't think eighty-year-old Harrison Ford even moves like an eighty-year-old man, and if they did use a stunt double for most of these scenes I don't even care. Whatever it takes. Now here, in 1944, is where I think the contrast with the cinematography and effects of the originals really stands out in a good way. It's the best of both worlds - twenties technology with eighties Harrison Ford. (Not to be confused with eighty-year-old Harrison Ford.) Now we get a succession of quick shots. Voller, the main villain and unequivocally affiliated with the Nazi Party, opens a box as two other Nazis look on. I was only half-joking when I predicted that Mads Mikkelson would be a villain as soon as his casting was announced. A big machine gun turret on the back of the train fires and burns. Antonio Banderas looks up suspiciously as he sits in his humble abode with a banjo and some other stuff nearby. I saw him earlier this year in Uncharted and couldn't help but notice that even at his age he remained sexier than either of the young female leads. Someone walks across an airfield in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot and then Voller, probably on the same airfield, looks up majestically. Young Indy turns around inside the train and gives us another good look at his unnatural face. Twenty-five years later, his aged hands pick up some kind of mechanical disk artifact that just might be the titular dial, although tossing it in here so casually doesn't exactly rectify the title's lack of awe. Helena shines a flashlight over the statue's arm. Indy and Helena fall into a canal with broken Gregian pillars on either side. The shot is too quick for me to tell, but I think they're standing in the water and the canal floor suddenly gives way. Through all of this, Indy - perhaps still talking to Sallah, perhaps not - gives a voiceover: "I don't believe in magic. But a few times in my life, I’ve seen things, things I can’t explain. And I’ve come to believe that it’s not so much what you believe...." And he leaves us hanging for a moment before concluding, "It's how hard you believe it." This addresses a couple weird details of the quasi-reality that is the world of Indiana Jones. First, essentially every religion, myth, and legend is true. Second, in spite of this, he spends much of his career being skeptical every time someone tells him about a new magic artifact. One has to assume that as a scientist, he looks for the most naturalistic explanation and evaluates everything on a case-by-case basis. It wouldn't be professional to start with the assumption that the Holy Grail is real just because Sankara stones and the Ark of the Covenant are real. But even so, by 1957 he's seen enough to say, "I believe, sister. That's why I'm down here." Now with this line in the trailer he seems to grant some validity to all supernatural beliefs without embracing any of them. He maintains an agnostic detachment, but long gone is the outright skepticism of his younger years. One can imagine him hastening to add, "Sallah, I've been from one side of this planet to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything." But before he finishes talking - I had to go a bit out of order to preserve a more coherent flow of ideas - there's a few shots of the ticker tape parade in New York City on August 13, 1969 in honor of the "astronauts" who made the "moon landing." It marks an interesting shift in the movies' approach. The first four don't disclose specific dates, and they remain sufficiently detached from the real world that you could pretend they actually happened without interfering with known real history. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series took a very different approach. Episodes were named after years and months, and Indy constantly participated in historical events and interacted with historical figures (actually actors in costume). This movie brings in some of the latter approach. Voller works for NASA by this point and that's going to tie into the prologue and the artifact somehow. Maybe they'll have their final showdown in space, a bold original move that I'm sure wouldn't upset anyone. In a quick series of shots in the middle of this parade, Indy rears up on a horse, Voller's sycophant Klaber pulls up on a police motorcycle that he probably borrowed from one of his fellow white supremacists, a beauty pageant winner looks frightened as her unpleasant-looking driver brings her car to a halt, and Indy rides his horse at high speed. Then Indy picks up his hat and whip from a table as lightning flashes offscreen and he finishes the aforementioned voiceover. Mic drop. Now the trailer blasts into full gear. Nazi motorcycle, falling boulder, exploding floor, Indy punches a Vietnam War protester, Indy punches a Nazi enabler, Klaber fires his gun into the air and makes parade viewers get down, Toby Jones yells "Indy!" atop the train, a Nazi gets pulled into a motorcycle as something explodes behind him, an airplane cockpit provides a beautiful view of a stormy sky reminiscent of the Millennium Falcon going into hyperspace, Indy whips a gun out of the train Nazi's hand, someone swims away from something exploding underwater, car chase, train chase, car chase, closeup of Helena apparently gripping an old person's neck through the shattered back window of a car, Indy rides his horse down a subway tunnel toward an oncoming train and ducks aside just in time, all backed by the Hidden Citizens Epic Trailer remix of the Raiders March: DUN-DA-DUN-DUNNN, DUN-DA-DUNNNNN! How can something sound so cool and so much like self-parody at the same time? I doubt this rendition will appear in the movie itself, and I have mixed feelings about the possibility that it will. It would sound kind of cheesy and dated, but fresher than an identical repetition of the motif we've heard in three movies already. I can live with or without it. TITLE SCREEN! Meh, I'm still not sold on it. Now we're in the home stretch. In some wretched hive of scum and villainy, a Middle Eastern gangster-looking guy asks, "Who is this man?" Indy, looking annoyed, says, "I'm her godfather" while Helena, looking perhaps embarrassed, says, "He's... mildly related." Who is she severely related to anyway? Someone British. Marcus Brody would be nice, but for storyline purposes, it's probably Toby Jones' character from the prologue. Now Indy draws his whip, cracks it thrice over a dozen people's heads, and snarls, "Get back!" But in a karmic reversal of his hilarious casual murder of the Cairo swordsman, the dozen people all pull guns on him. He gets a panicked look. They graciously give him time to duck under the table before they all fire at the spot where he was standing. This bit of ridiculousness justifies itself by being funny, but I wouldn't be surprised to see in the movie that they don't really want him dead anyway. I bet they're just putting him in his place before offering him a mutually beneficial alliance that they intend to break at the first opportunity. Missing from the trailer, as far as I could see, was CIA agent Mason, played by Shaunette Renée Wilson. Not a good look, Disney. Also missing was Mutt, who's been confirmed to not appear in the movie, and Marion, who hasn't. Seeing as Marion is Indy's wife, liked by fans, and played by an actress who's alive and well, she should at least get a couple lines to explain that as much as she'd love to come on Indy's final adventure, she's already committed to a series of bra-burning rallies. And Mutt probably died in Vietnam. Come to think of it, even though this is meant to be Indy's final adventure, and even though every franchise doesn't need to be kept on life support forever, he's such an interesting guy that I wouldn't mind watching more movies about his everyday life as a grouchy old man. I would pay money to see him walk out of a screening of Star Wars and complain about what an obnoxious ass Han Solo is.
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Thursday was the first time since 2019 that I made it up to my grandfather's house for Thanksgiving. Although I had a great time, afterward of course I waxed nostalgic and depressed about how those three years have zipped by and how much has transpired within them, good and bad. Back then it was my grandmother's house too. Back then nobody had heard of Covid-19. Back then the girl next door hadn't yet sent the police after me. Back then I hadn't even applied to graduate school. Back then I had zero nieces instead of two. And when all is said and done, back then I was three years younger. Not that I'm old, but I'm significantly closer to the end of the prime of my life than the beginning. After thirty-five, if I'm lucky, I'll spend the rest of my life physically deteriorating. That seems like a really perverse ratio to me. A majority of people in developed nations - not me, I'm sure, given my state of health, but a majority - can reasonably expect to live into their eighties or beyond. So in my view, they shouldn't start actually being old until they turn sixty or thereabouts. They shouldn't start losing their hair or their eyesight or their bladder control until then. But nobody asked me. Getting old is going to be a major theme of Indiana Jones 5, which is one of the things I'm grateful for this year. Of course I'm being a little premature because it might suck, but I'm confident that it will be at least moderately entertaining and that I'll prefer its existence to its nonexistence. Give me a few chases and explosions and I'll be happy. It will be set in 1969, the year my dad was born. It's going to heavily feature the moon landing and the Nazis who ran the American space program. (On the one hand, casting Nazis as the villains again feels ridiculous, but on the other hand, Nazis are still villains in real life and it will be more cathartic than ever to watch them get what they deserve, which, in case I wasn't clear enough, is death. Nazis deserve death.) I hope it also touches on the Stonewall riots, the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War protests, and second-wave feminism, just so the people who complain about everything being too "woke" will have aneurysms when they watch it. But I digress. Indiana Jones is canonically 70 years old in this movie (though Harrison Ford is pushing 80, and is older than George Hall was when the latter portrayed 93-year-old Indy in the highly underrated Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which shows that at least people are aging better than they used to even if they still spend most of their lives looking old). He's an old man in a time of immense change and upheaval and as he approaches retirement, he's becoming obsolete. This angle is especially interesting to me in light of the character's origins. He is, of course, based on the action heroes from old adventure serials and was never meant to be taken altogether seriously, yet he's always been a little more realistic than them. He gets hurt and he gets tired while they never did. He's firmly a product of the 1930s and 40s just as they were, yet unlike them, he stuck around and aged through subsequent decades, and that's just cool to me. Meta, almost. And Disney has promised not to recast him or reboot the series with a different actor. When Harrison Ford is done, Indiana Jones is done (even though he's already been portrayed at different ages by multiple other actors - the aforementioned George Hall as well as River Phoenix, Corey Carrier, and Sean Patrick Flanery). So more than likely his goddaughter Helena, introduced in this upcoming movie, will get her own spinoff series instead, and the people who complain about everything being too "woke" will weep and wail and gnash their teeth that this icon of masculinity has been replaced by a woman. I see no downside, though. If her series sucks I can just pretend it doesn't exist. I don't anticipate that, though, because as long as it gives me a few chases and explosions I'll be happy. Another thing I'm grateful for, one that's actually been released, is the first season of the Star Wars series Andor. Now again, because I have very low standards, I found Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi worth watching, but in some ways they were disappointing. They fell short of their potential. Andor is just phenomenal in every respect - great plot, great characters, great dialogue, great music. It dares to be original instead of nostalgia bait - so much so, in fact, that the first three episodes didn't feel like Star Wars to me and were hard to get into, but once I got used to it, hoo-boy it was great. So much political intrigue, but done better than the prequel movies (which I also liked), punctuated periodically by just the right amount of action. Likeable villains, despicable protagonists, and just regular people trying to make it in the galaxy with no Force and no lightsabers. Great debates and doublespeak and monologues. Electronic music that sounds more modern and different than the usual scores, but works beautifully. And the thinly-veiled parallels to real life give the people who complain about everything being too "woke" a lot to complain about, so that's a plus. I recommend it to everyone because I've seen multiple people say that they're not really into Star Wars but they love this show. They say it's just a great show, period. Last but not least, I'm grateful now and always for music, my love, my drug, my lifeblood, my precious, my escape from whatever disappointments or existential horrors life can throw at me. I hope and pray that whatever happens as I age, I won't lose my hearing. Which means that I probably will because God doesn't seem very concerned about what I want.
I got into Italo-disco because it's an ancestor of spacesynth, a genre of usually space-themed music that all sounds the same but in a good way. Italo-disco itself sounds a bit more diverse. I think all these tracks are Italo-disco, but I don't know much about music genres, I just know what I like, so sue me if I'm a little off. Charlie - Spacer WomanA classic in the venerable "love from outer space" theme. Crazy Gang - Every SundayThis song is either about being abused by clergy or just being bored at church, I'm not sure which. Maybe it's deliberately open to interpretation. Damian - The Time WarpAn even more upbeat cover of the song from Rocky Horror Picture Show. Italian Boys - Forever LoversI have nothing to say about this one but it's catchy. Kano - Another LifeI have nothing to say about this one but it's catchy. Kano - Cosmic VoyagerI like any piece of media with a reference to outer space in the title. Koto - Dragon's LegendBased on the infamously challenging Don Bluth-animated 1983 video game Dragon's Lair. Koto - Star WarsThe most danceable version of this theme I've ever heard. The entire album "Koto Plays Sci-Fi Themes" is great but I had to exercise some restraint. Ottawan - Haut les Mains (Donne-moi ton couer)An English version also exists, but obviously Italo-disco should be in French. RADAR - China DarlingI suppose the title alone is politically incorrect by today's standards, but there's nothing racist in the song. Radiorama - AliensThe lyrics are in such broken English that I'm not sure what's going on, but I think the aliens in this case are supposed to be scary. Radiorama - VampiresAgain, the English is broken, but it's more clear this time that the vampires are supposed to be scary, especially because they're vampires. Robert Barre - Neanderthal ManIf Neanderthals were alive today, they would listen to this kind of music and be overqualified to run for political office. Wish Key - Orient ExpressLast but by no means least, this one has really grown on me. I especially love how the male and female vocals blend. A while ago, as I mentioned, I was moving through the interview process to be an FSY counselor until suddenly there were no openings because several sessions were canceled due to low enrollment. As part of that process I had to prepare a five-minute devotional based on a section of the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet. So I read through the pamphlet again for the first time in years. I think it teaches good values for people young and old people to live by, but as the cynic and skeptic that I am, I don't agree with every single thing in it, and now that I'm no longer trying to become an FSY counselor I'm free to say so. It's not like anyone should expect it to be perfect or timeless - the first edition, published in 1965, was very different and is kind of a laugh riot now. (My favorite part is "Pants for young women are not desirable attire for shopping, at school, in the library, in cafeterias or restaurants.")
Having said that, I can only remember six parts in the current edition that I disagree with and I'm not going to read the whole thing again, so this will be a short post! And again, it does contain a lot of good stuff. The pamphlet, I mean, not my post. Insert your own quip about none of my posts containing a lot of good stuff here. Dating "Young men generally take the initiative in asking for and planning dates." This is true, of course, but it shouldn't be. Young women should be encouraged to go after what they want instead of passively hoping someone will offer it to them. This sentence is only descriptive, not prescriptive, but still it offers implicit encouragement to an uncool status quo and could be deleted without losing anything of value. Dress and Appearance "Young women should avoid short shorts and short skirts, shirts that do not cover the stomach, and clothing that does not cover the shoulders or is low-cut in the front or the back. Young men should also maintain modesty in their appearance." The sexist double standard here is so obvious, it would be funny if it was funny. The reasons this section gives for dressing modestly are to "show that you know how precious your body is" and "show that you are a disciple of Jesus Christ and that you love Him." Yet this passage shows what the writers really believe: that dressing modestly is far more important for women because they have a responsibility to help men control their bestial urges. It's nice that they, unlike many people in the church, didn't explicitly state this toxic and false belief, but it needs to be scrapped altogether. Either make a detailed list of clothing that men shouldn't wear, or be equally vague for women. "Young women, if you desire to have your ears pierced, wear only one pair of earrings." I stopped believing that God cares about this when I read Leonard J. Arrington’s diary and learned that General Authorities in the 1970s disagreed among themselves about whether it was even okay for women to have one pair of earrings. My thoughts were a. why the hell was it any of their business and b. why should I believe what they said publicly about earrings thirty years later? Entertainment and Media "Do not attend, view, or participate in anything that is vulgar, immoral, violent, or pornographic in any way." Nobody in the church follows this ridiculously un-nuanced standard unless they eschew entertainment and media altogether. It would rule out any movie that depicts Jesus Christ being tortured and executed. It would rule out any movie that depicts Joseph Smith being murdered. It would rule out Star Wars, which the local Institute had no problem screening at an activity even though it literally has "wars" in the title. It would rule out any Peanuts cartoon where Lucy yanks the football away and makes Charlie Brown flop onto his back. Language "Choose not to insult others or put them down, even in joking." I could quibble about how Jesus insulted people all the time, but it's really the "even in joking" part I take issue with. This happens to be how I bond with my friends. Without my snark, sass, and sarcasm, few of them would notice that I exist. And in fact, multiple studies have found that romantic partners who tease or roast each other are happier. I observed this principle years ago when Dale G. Renlund and his wife Ruth spoke in the USU Spectrum. They roasted each other constantly and I thought it was way more romantic than the "My wife is a literal goddess and I am unworthy to kiss her feet" spiel I usually hear from LDS men. I wish I remembered all the specifics. I just remember that he teased her about the time she thought it would be nice to frame his stethoscope and then her mother almost died because he couldn't find his stethoscope, and he teased her a lot about being a lawyer, and then he said, "I know, I know, it isn't fair to judge the entire profession based on four... or five... hundred thousand bad apples." Sexual Purity "Homosexual and lesbian behavior is a serious sin. If you find yourself struggling with same-gender attraction or you are being persuaded to participate in inappropriate behavior, seek counsel from your parents and bishop. They will help you." As I have recently explained, I don't believe that homosexual behavior is a sin because in my observations, for the most part, gay and lesbian members who pursue committed monogamous same-sex relationships against the church's wishes seem considerably happier than those who pursue lives of celibacy or marry someone they're not attracted to. I expect this passage will be reworded with a bit more sensitivity but not really changed for some time. Seeking counsel from parents and bishops is a bit of roulette. In the past, parents might have "helped" by throwing their child out on the street and bishops might have "helped" by arranging some kind of conversion therapy. Things have vastly improved by now, but there's still no standardized training to ensure that parents or bishops in the church know what they're talking about. In a recent study, gay Latter-day Saints said the most helpful thing bishops can do is show love and empathy, and the least helpful thing they can do is remind them of church teachings and policies that they're already perfectly aware of. Out of a silly concern for people's privacy, I used to give pseudonyms to everyone I wrote about on my blog. So when I wrote about my group from Shanan Ballam's Fall 2015 Poetry Writing course, I gave the members stupid pseudonyms: Bracelets, Redhead, and Glasses. And then Bracelets was the only one I wrote about consistently but I think I did mention the others once each. Anyway, I hate those nicknames now, so I'm going to come clean. Their names are Lauren, Clara, and Joe. That felt weird. I called Lauren "Bracelets" because she wore lots of bracelets on both arms, as well as hats with big, floppy brims and other generally fabulous clothing. She liked to be fabulous, but she wasn't conceited or anything. She was responsible for the formation of our group when she said those of us who happened to sit near her on the first day of class should just be a group, so she shaped my life in some ways with that thoughtless act. She also became a fan of my blog and more than once the only reason I continued writing it every week despite its very underwhelming performance. I would have given up back then, a few months after starting, but because of her I didn't, and now I've sunk too much time and energy into it to give up despite the paltry returns on my effort being nowhere near worth it. Thanks, Lauren, I say sarcastically. On my phone, she was and remains listed as "Lady Lauren" because she had an affinity for the romanticized version of the Middle Ages that we all know never really existed. I don't even remember why, but she once told me, "You're my knight in shining armor." And I told another woman about that and the other woman said, "Dude, either she likes you, or you're really deep in the friend zone." Women are allowed to say "friend zone" unironically without getting their heads bitten off because reasons. But Lauren was just big on being a lady and being treated like a lady and stuff. In her phone, I discovered one day that I was listed as "Christopher Aspie Friend". I posted on Facebook, "Today I found out that my crush has me listed in her phone as 'Christopher Aspie Friend'. I'm not sure how I feel about that." I felt safe posting it because Lauren didn't have Facebook. A couple months later, some random lady liked the post. The random lady, upon investigation, turned out to be Lauren's mother. I think I'm still listed as "Christopher Aspie Friend", and I'm torn between wanting to keep it that way for nostalgia's sake and wanting to change it because I now know that Hans Asperger collaborated with the Nazis by knowingly referring children with disabilities to be murdered at the Am Spiegelgrund clinic. (Nobody knew this in 2015.) I have ceased using Aspie or Asperger's as a descriptor in any other context. I never mentioned on my blog how she broke my heart, but I did cryptically allude to it with some very melodramatic language that's still better poetry than any of the actual poetry I wrote for our poetry class. Around that time, though, I saw Disney's Inside Out and learned that it's okay to be sad sometimes, and that was powerful. She started dating the guy she'd called "basically my brother" and then that ended but I still didn't have a chance. Anyway, we remained good friends but we argued sometimes because I got frustrated with her sometimes. I won't talk about why because I don't want to criticize her, and I'm sure she had legitimate reasons to be frustrated with me too, and I didn't fully appreciate the toll that the hardship she was going through must have taken. Let's just say we weren't great at communicating. We stayed in touch after she graduated and moved on, and I got her into the Star Wars fandom and found out she was already in the Legend of Zelda fandom, but sometimes she stopped responding to texts for months at a time and I still don't know why. I have another friend who was like that for the better part of a decade, but it was because she periodically relapsed into heroin and felt embarrassed to talk to me, so I don't know what the deal was here. Most recently, Lauren stopped responding for about twenty-six months. In late 2019 I was texting her once a week with no response, and then in early 2020 I told her to have a nice life, which, even though it sounds like a nice thing to say, is actually a rude thing to say. My frustration this time around stemmed in large part from waiting indefinitely on the feedback she had promised for the book that I'd sent her in April and she'd finished reading in July or so. I still texted her happy Easter 2020 and then in October 2020 I texted her to mention that I had a dream where she told me why she'd disappeared for a year, and I was very disappointed when I woke up. But I just accepted that she would probably not be part of my life again and I didn't know why. I didn't expect anything to happen when I texted her Merry Christmas this year. And nothing did happen for three days. But then - So this was a really, really nice surprise. I do hope she'll stick around for a while. I haven't asked about why she disappeared or why she didn't give me feedback on my book, and I'm sure I will at some point but first and foremost I'm just grateful to have her back and I have no hard feelings whatsoever. I value her friendship very much. I don't even feel like my former romantic interest in her was a complete waste of time like most of my romantic interests have been. Her kindness, her intelligence, her thoughtfulness, and her sense of humor, besides just generally making her a good person to associate with and a positive influence on my life, have helped to shape my vision of the kind of woman I'm going to marry. The thing I like most about her sense of humor is how we can take a joke that isn't all that funny and play along with it so seriously that our seriousness about the joke becomes the joke. Anyway, maybe I can't adequately convey what I'm trying to convey in this post to those who haven't met her, but our reconnection is the greatest thing that's happened to me for a while and though it came out of the blue, I'm sure I was prompted to text her Merry Christmas, and it increases my confidence in the glorious promises God has made me if I can just be patient and stay close to Him.
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"Guys. Chris's blog is the stuff of legends. If you’re ever looking for a good read, check this out!"
- Amelia Whitlock "I don't know how well you know Christopher Randall Nicholson, but... he's trolling. You should read his blog. It's delightful." - David Young About the AuthorC. Randall Nicholson is a white cisgender Christian male, so you can hate him without guilt, but he's also autistic and asexual, so you can't, unless you're an anti-vaxxer, in which case the feeling is mutual. This blog is where he periodically rants about life, the universe, and/or everything. Archives
May 2024
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