Too Absent Herald

For the second time in less than a week, I have discovered that we have taken a collective leap into the future. First it was the brain chip. Now, in the middle of rural Texas, I bought a bottle of water that boasts a new technology on its back. The company is called Biota Spring Water, and right behind the little gratuitous picture of a Rocky Mountain, it claims that the plastic bottle is constructed using a new technology. According to the back label, whose veracity I presume is regulated by some government agency, “BIOTA Spring Water is the World’s First bottled water/beverage packaged in a Planet Friendly ™ bottle.” What does this mean? Apparently, the bottle is made using corn, rather than the oil that is usually used in the plastic-making process. This means that given the right conditions (high heat, high humidity, and high levels of micro-organisms), the plastic bottle will break down into water, carbon dioxide and organic material in about 3 months.

This again is something that seemed unimaginable. I was raised believing that plastic was a necessary evil, that could be treated but not cured, using the three R’s. But now we’re in the future and we have the technology to composte plastics. Somehow this seems even more unbelievable than the brainchip. If they can combine the two technologies, then that will serve as the third posting to this pair.

If one is a fan of science fiction, in any sense, the lack of real technological progress in the last several decades in slightly disappointing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we have made things smaller and faster than one could have ever imagined. (Right now, I am typing this on the cheapest laptop that Mac makes, but its size and speed would blow away a 1980’s man.) But making things smaller is only technological progress in a narrow sense. There has not been a real breakthrough that has really seemed impossible for quite a while. Until today.

In the most recent issue of Nature, Professor John P. Donoghue of Brown University wrote an article on his successful experiment with a computer chip that is controlled by thought. This chip was implanted into the brain of a paralyzed man, allowing him to control his television and computer using only his thoughts. The man was able to write emails, change channels, and play pong, all without ever moving a muscle.

This is bigger than flying cars or cloning, which have typically served as the benchmarks of the future. Those developments have been imaginable for some time, leaving scientists the task of working out the details. Using only one’s thoughts to control external objects has been practically unimaginable…until now.

I think that we are now officially in the future.

I’ve ranted a bit here, and in the old site (posts returning soon, I hope) about how much of a let down the new Lucasworks have been. A very interesting development, however, was watching Shattered Glass on IFC. It’s a good dramatization/narrative of the Stephen Glass scandal at the New Republic. The revelation is that the movie starred Hayden “Anakin” Christensen. In my opinion, he really did well in the role. As the weasely Glass, he had to slowly, achingly fess up to fabricating stories.
In essence, the role called for being a whiny bastard, – just the thing I/we despise in SW III. But he pulls it off with pathos. Honestly. I have no sympathy for the whole situation at the New Republic, and I agree with Leon Wieseltier, that Glass is “a worm.”
So I don’t like the “real” person” and I don’t much care for the actor. But despite all that against, it’s an engaging performance.

So I can’t help thinking that it’s perhaps having a person and maybe other people, along with real walls, etc. — having an actual as opposed to “virual” set that perhaps makes the difference.
Except for when pulled over on the highway, I’m not an actor, so I can’t evaluate much further. I know that when I’m directing I try to get actors to focus on the smallest possible aspect of the scene.

Of course I pull up from my study of acting when I sat down last night in front of TCM to watch John Cassavetes’ Faces and Woman Under the Influence. Is that acting? Maybe. But it is surely great filmmaking.
When I watch those wonderfully rough-edged films I head right back to the drawing board and the legal pads. If it’s on the paper, it can be put on the screen. So that’s how I’m spending the next few months.

Besides, I already own the legal pads. I don’t have the money to do anything else.

I was thrown to thrills at the recent wedding (website coming!) at the imminent danger of polaroid picture taking. There is certainly something more endearing, and endangering of the instant “look what you looked like!” snap.

It’s so much more satisfying, while four people are changing into suits, to leave behind a pile of ACTUAL Pieces of ART.
Here’s where the pictures should go, especially the one of me that looks like a piece of evidence from Gitmo.

POLANOID. Membership is Free.

Two cameras (can you spot one?), waiting for Gerard to get back from take-out. A pretty good story, for improv, I think.