A Cult of My Own: Maria Bamford

I know she is an acquired taste. I know some people don't like the weird noises she makes. I know some people don't like the zillion voices she uses. But Maria Bamford makes me laugh in ways that no other comedian does. Her comedy seems so deeply personal that if you were not exposed to her previously, you may well wonder where the artist meets her material. 

Bamford's complicated history with bipolar disorder, depression and OCD informs her act, which can go from refreshingly innocent to starkly confessional and back again in mere seconds. The bleakness and dysfunction that hangs heavily over some of her comedy might be a little much for some people, but I find her absolutely refreshing. The uneasiness (somehow both hand-crafted and sincere at the same time), her frequent use of non-sequiturs, and the "just where is she going?" mood to some of her bits makes watching her anytime a delight. 

It's not in the Andy Kaufman way, however, where you would wonder just what the hell crazy thing he was going to try and pull off each time. Kaufman had issues, certainly, but most of his stunts were planned well in advance, and the main goal was to shock his audiences not to make them laugh. The ability to shock was his main weapon, and his routines pretty much lived and died by it. Bamford's act is purer, and mostly consists of a singularly talented woman alone with a microphone and her cavalcade of personas, accents and noises. Lucky for you and her, she comes complete with some marvelously twisted though funny material that almost always keeps you guessing. 

Bamford also likes to mess with the established comedy hour format. In a previous special – actually called The Special Special Special – she did her entire act for only her own parents, even giving them bathroom breaks and snacks in between short sets. It's not all cutesy though... the unease she unleashes with some of her sharper, darker jokes, which veer directly towards her parents at times – they are the source of much of her anxiety, after all – is meant to throw both you and them off-balance, but her actions also somehow never felt purposefully mean, just therapeutic, and ultimately loving, in her way.

At a few points in Bamford's latest Netflix special, Old Baby (in which she progresses from testing her stand-up act with one person in a living room to people sitting on a bench on a street to a small bowling alley crowd to an intimate stage setting), she breaks to also hawk her own merchandise (which she says at one point is completely free) from a small table to her various audiences. In selling pencils to benefit the psychiatric hospital in her hometown – she says her mom "worked there AND stayed there" – she shows that the pencil has "the word HOPE on this side... so you can GRIND DOWN HOPE... verrry slowly."

Yeah, I get that. Been there, felt that... occasionally still there and feeling that. Speak to me, Maria... in all your voices.

The Shark Film Office: Beyond Simply Treading Water...

It would be nice if we had a world where people would simply be happy in going to the movies to see beautiful sharks gliding smoothly and expertly through the water, content in seeing these glorious creatures interacting in their natural environment while spending their lives as a vital cog in the ecological cycle of our planet.

It would be nice, but it's not realistic. Sure, you can put out a documentary now and again, such as Disney's Oceans, and have some marvelous footage of sharks included in the mix, and you will get a certain audience. Or you can put out, on a much more limited level, a doc like Sharkwater to bring in more specialized crowds that, like me, believe in saving sharks for the good of the oceans, the world, and mankind in turn. But you will probably get even smaller audience for something like that, or you will have to tour with such a film to build those crowds. Or you can stick to television docs like Sir David Attenborough and give us BBC series after BBC series of pure scientific wonderment, with a more than generous sprinkling of sharky goodness in the mix. The audience is definitely out there for such productions, but the ease of access for such shows ensures that they will likely never end up on the big screen (except in rare instances like a premiere, or an IMAX film in a museum screening room). So, sharks, in their natural state, are rarely seen in real movie theatres.

The movie industry -- as in, the entertainment world at large -- is still pretty much resigned to having sharks fulfill one prime role in their works. And just as it has been since the advent of storytelling, it's the same role that much of the real world assigns to these creatures automatically as well: that of a toothy menace... a mindless eating machine... a killer. Worse, a killer intent with villainously plotting to devour as many people as possible. And no matter how much shark conversation groups, or their fellow enlightened citizens, try to turn the tide (so to speak), the fact is that shark movies -- ahem, shark movies where sharks are only evil and vicious and menacing -- get media attention. 

However, most shark movies don't even make it to the theatres nowadays nor are they even made with theatrical distribution as a primary goal. When you think about it for a second, beyond the Jaws series and a couple of smaller examples, sharks have never really taken off at the modern box office the way vampires, dinosaurs, zombies, monsters, and aliens have. But cinematic sharks thrive lurking, dangerous, and entirely lucrative elsewhere. Cable, online streaming, and retail home video (still swimming about out there) are now the primary target areas for makers of shark flicks, and they apparently pull in boffo ratings and sales. Ask Syfy Channel about their endless, ultra-cheap variations on shark films (their massively popular Sharknado series is the biggest, most outrageous, and well-marketed example, with a fourth installment, subtitled The 4th Awakens, on its way in July), or their other flicks where sharks are combined physically with other supposedly vicious creatures (Sharktopus), placed into mortal combat with other absurdly large, fanciful creatures (Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus) or a melding of each of these categories (Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf). 

The thankful part is that the further these films get from the actual, original shark form, the more grounded in pure fantasy nonsense the films get. It is harder to connect these film sharks to reality the more we are laughing at the resulting product. The other thankful part is that because the quality -- in nearly every other area but marketing -- is so cheap and shoddy, it is almost impossible to take a single example of Syfy shark promotion seriously. The downside is that the impetus for these films -- and it is a primal fear that the target audience seems never to shake -- is still the same: the shark is a murderous beast.

I have been at a crossroads with all shark films for a good while now. While I am a huge shark conservation nut, I cannot help but recognize that Jaws is one of the best adventure thrillers and horror films ever made in film history, as well as being a personal favorite, well lodged in my Top Ten films of all time. Ever since I first saw it as a teenager (I did not quite see it in theatres on its original run, but did see a rerelease a few years later, though I had seen it on HBO by that point), it has been hugely influential on both my film watching habits and my psyche. When Jaws broke big in the mid-'70s -- both Peter Benchley's original novel and Steven Spielberg's film adaptation -- its wild popularity did a massive amount of damage to the reputation of the shark -- especially the great white shark. Jaws is well documented as having significantly increased the wholesale slaughter on the part of sharks worldwide starting in the mid-1970s, as well as furthering the already existent role of the shark in the public consciousness as a villainous monster. But you could counter with an argument that Jaws also made a lot of people, myself included, become fascinated as kids and teenagers with sharks to the point of distraction, even to the point of committing to their welfare for the rest of our lives. If Jaws had not been so hugely regarded, would we have popular annual events like, for better or for worse (because there are drawbacks here as well) Shark Week, where sharks as a group at least get a general better trial before the public than normal?

Artistically, the plus side of Jaws being such a popular film is that it has proven objectively impossible to create a shark film that equals it. You can look at a science fiction film like 2001: A Space Odyssey, and say, "Oh, yeah... but there's also Star Wars." And Alien, and Aliens, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner, and E.T., and many more science fiction films of rather equal merit, and so it goes in other genres and sub-genres. But where do you refer people who want a high quality, action-adventure shark movie after Jaws? Deep Blue Sea? Don't get me wrong... I love that film but not for reasons of quality. No, you usually have to switch the focus from sharks themselves over to animal attack films of relatively equal quality such as The Birds or jump straight to the pure horror genre to find another film. And even there, the quality is far overridden by the hack work (as it is in all genres, really). Jaws, while it did practically invent the summer blockbuster season, is still a rather singular film. Its popularity certainly ensured that it would have many, many imitators all trying to equal its success; its universally held measure of high quality also ensured that those imitators would never hit the same high water mark, either artistically or financially.

It now feels that filmmakers have just given up trying to make even a good shark-based film for the theatres (the recent news about Steve Alten's Meg finally getting made or the upcoming thriller, The Shallows, notwithstanding), and given my shredded psyche which builds fortresses on either side of this argument, this is both great and sad. Today, we hang out on video or tune into channels like Syfy and mostly get Sharktopus and his low-budget, poorly animated lot. (Again, another shark film that I think is entertaining on a purely juvenile level, and I think the drive behind creating such a film is hilarious). And suckers like me, because I am torn in my love to see sharks on film finally treated like the brilliant and diverse creatures that they are but also am addicted to monsters and horror films, tune in to these films time and again. I cannot stop. I am a lost cause, even when the addiction itself is, in the case of the bulk of films from Syfy and The Asylum, completely unworthy of my attention were I to approach them from a critical angle. I would prefer that someone put some genuine craft and attention into a shark film, but c'mon... stupid, crappy shark films are sheer fun. And everyone knows it.

But let's get to my reason for writing all of this today. About a decade ago, having already started The Cinema 4 Pylon (which would be my central site) and Cinema 4: Cel Bloc (where I could concentrate solely on animation), I was torn between which other film specialties I wanted to focus. The topic was certainly going to come out of the horror and science fiction genres, and for a while, I thought that in the fight between dinosaurs, robots, and sharks for my attention, that dinosaurs were certainly going to come out on top, there being far more films (and far more interesting films as well) available especially. But I veered toward the ocean instead and I started a blog called The Shark Film Office.

My first post on The Shark Film Office went up in February 2007 -- a review of a really bad Dedee Pfeiffer film called Blue Demon, featuring genetically enhanced great white sharks, that I nonetheless found fascinating for just how much it actually tried, in many scenes, to avoid the gore and violence one would normally associate with such a film. But I found out quickly, having no real guide as to how many shark films there were or what I should even consider to be a shark film, that it was hard to really pin down what I wanted from the subject. Was it more important to me to just review crappy shark films, one after the other, or to show just how deeply the image of the shark is embedded in the mind and history of man? Should I use the site to simply tee off on easy marks -- yes, fish in a barrel -- or should I take a broader approach to the subject, citing examples of films where sharks are used extensively in dialogue rather than in image, furthering the discussion by not just showing how mankind approaches members of their various species, but also how the creatures have colored our thoughts and our language throughout film history?

And so I went with the latter aspect. I could review Blue Demon and its low-rent ilk and thrill my teenage self to tears, but also write a piece about Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura, an acknowledged cinematic masterpiece which quite surprisingly has a significant but unseen shark prescence at its core. Early on in the process through, I discovered that I didn't want to ignore the other creatures of the deep who play upon our idiotic fears as a species, and so I added a subtitle to The Shark Film Office that reads "Sharks, yes... but rays, squid, octopi and orcas, too..." This broke open enough extra ground for me that I was certain to never run out of films to tackle. But then something happened... I stopped trying to tackle those films altogether.

By the summer of 2008, I had only put up a handful of posts on The Shark Film Office. With my attention diverted in a major way by my actual job, my family, a general ennui, and a slowly boiling but steadily growing depressive spot in my soul and mind that would lead eventually to suicidal ideation, declaring myself 5150, and going through two years of meds and therapy, I stopped writing. I stopped writing on the Pylon, on the Cel Bloc, and especially on The Shark Film Office. Stopped cold in July of 2008. I never promoted The Shark Film Office,  and I never really figured out my focus (the style changed constantly in those early posts; I couldn't even commit to how the information would be presented). In the back of my mind, I thought constantly that I really wanted to restart the site again and give it the full attention that this self-pronounced, shark-loving maniac could apply to it, but I never did. While I continued to post sporadically on the Pylon through 2011, it was very half-hearted. By the time the depression kicked in full force in 2012, I had stopped writing completely, except at my real writing and editing job. 

Then last September happened. After a couple of years of my therapist telling me that I needed to start my personal writing again to get even close to being happy (he being a pretty sharp guy), I had made several attempts but they all fell far short of the goal for me. Finally, out of desperation (and already out of therapy), I decided to spend the day before my birthday writing for about nine hours straight. It was beyond therapeutic; it was redefining. I spent a similar amount of time on my birthday doing the same, this time hashing about ideas that I had always wanted to try when I was blogging full-time. I posted my first true regular post in ages on the Pylon on September 10th, and it became my new standard (same as the old standard) from there. Not only was the immediate reaction very pleasing -- it did help that my first post was a rant about a lack of decent gluten-free bread, a subject close to my heart... and stomach -- but its acceptance allowed me just enough push to keep going. 

The Cinema 4 Pylon continued to rev back up throughout the month, and by October, it was back wholly to its original intent. Then came the biggest hurdle, restarting Cinema 4: Cel Bloc, with its more cohesive focus on a single subject and generally much longer articles. That one I hit really hard in November and got cruising along at a very pleasing pace for a few months. (Getting seriously ill in February and March did cause a setback on both sites, but now that I am better, we are starting to cruise again.) Somewhere in that flourish of writing and posting, I knocked out a couple of reviews for The Shark Film Office, one in November and one in mid-February, just as I was getting ill. All along, The Shark Film Office had been nagging at me: "Why don't you start me again? You love sharks; why aren't you writing about us?"

To be fair, I still didn't know how much I wanted to really commit to the project, but I had been doing something on the sidelines that was going to help me immeasurably. A while back, I had started keeping a database of films featuring, not just sharks, but every type of large aquatic sea creature (even some smaller ones) that are often called upon by the movie studios to do villainous work in film. This even included sea monsters of every fanciful variety, not just what we consider to be "natural" monsters. Putting this database together started the gears turning again, and helped me begin to figure out exactly what I wanted from The Shark Film Office (and even other angles for new features on The Cinema 4 Pylon, one of which -- The Monster's on the Loose!!! -- has already seen its first edition).

So I have decided to recommit to The Shark Film Office. I plan to feature regular reviews of films featuring sharks (and some of those other sea creatures I mentioned) over the rest of the year. I will be tackling narrative features for the most part, but I plan on including reviews of documentaries and television specials as much as possible too. I hope in time that the site will become a decent resource for anyone interested in the history of shark film (and television). For the time being, all new articles for The Shark Film Office will premiere here on The Cinema 4 Pylon initially, and will be archived at The Shark Film Office site as well, until I can start promoting that site on its own.

For the record, I am still torn on just how I can appease my two differing sides: the one that wants to show sharks for themselves, and the one that loves really stupid shark horror movies. Is there a happy medium? Can I cater to both sides of my sharky soul and not come out as split apart as a giant two-headed great white from a Syfy Channel movie? I figure that is part of the journey. If you are writing and don't seek to discover something new about yourself, then you are not really writing. I am hoping that you will dive into that deep end of the pool with me.

RTJ

It's Alive! It's Alive! The Cinema 4: Cel Bloc

It has been great getting back into blogging full-time and writing every single day for the past month (plus a couple of weeks), but now I am truly excited.

As some of you may recall, when I first started my online life a decade ago with my move to Southern California, I ran a second website called the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc, a site devoted to animation. Its original intent was to be someplace where I posted short one to two paragraph pieces about whatever animated film I watched that day. But, like most plans or cute little pet monsters, it quickly grew into something else altogether. The daily thing ambled on for a few months, but I was dissatisfied with the pieces I was producing. My manner gradually evolved into the style which I have adopted through today, less concerned with the hows and whys in which the film was created and more about how the film has affected me on a personal level or what influence it may have or may yet have upon me. 

As for the cartoon reviews, I felt it was important to give as full a synopsis of the film as possible in order to discuss some of the older gag references, song lyrics, cameos, and visual puns at hand. This made writing the reviews a little more cumbersome, and I burned out on doing them pretty swiftly. However, over the years, every time that I bought a new cartoon collection, I always made mental plans to resurrect the Cel Bloc and work my way straight through the set. Those plans never came to fruition, and my drive to bring the Cel Bloc back from the grave got swallowed up by the general depression controlling my life over the past few years.

The amazing thing (and I am not out of bounds using that adjective here -- so overused on the internet and social media and usually inappropriately as well -- because this fact really is amazing to me) is that the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc was my more popular blog. IS my more popular blog. The total pageviews I have gained on The Cinema 4 Pylon in the past month are still far overmatched by those of the Cel Bloc, even though (until yesterday) I had not posted on there since September of 2008. And that is with me posting more than three times as many articles on the Pylon overall. As excited as I was to see how many hits I was getting on my depression article here a couple of weeks ago, my largest post on the Cel Bloc (for my April 2006 piece on the Fleischer Bros.' Somewhere in Dreamland) has reached ten times that number. Yes, that post has had nine years of sitting dormant on the Cel Bloc to pick up stray visitors and the odd comment (I still get regular comments on films I wrote about ages ago, and far more than I do on the Pylon), but it had already far exceeded my current average Pylon count back in those early days.

As mentioned, last night I posted for the first time on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc in just over seven years, and it felt really great. In keeping with the Halloween spirit, I tackled the Bugs Bunny and Gossamer the Monster classic, Hair-Raising Hare (the one where Bugs does the monster's nails), and had a great time doing it. What I really enjoy about building these is having to watch the same film over and over to get all the details, even watching sections in slow motion, and so I get to climb into the film a little bit. Doing so (often) builds even more appreciation for the animator's art. And I also get to become reacquainted with old pals in the process.

If you like animation, I hope you will zip over to the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc and check out my new post here. I plan on semi-regular posts there moving into the future, but not the daily grind. I don't want to burn out that quickly. And if you love animation, I hope that you will dig into some of my older articles as well. 

Why I Write: The Blur of the Past Two Years

Well, it's the first bump in the road for me in getting back to writing regularly here on The Cinema 4 Pylon. Through yesterday morning, I had posted an article here every day for fifteen days straight, from September 30 forward, as part of my Countdown to Halloween celebration. And then I hit today.

I have been trying to keep things light on here as I start writing again. The main focus of this site is about my love of movies -- and every so often, about music, comics, baseball, and books, as well -- and how they have influenced me over the years, sometimes in surprising ways. I do like to focus intensely on issues I have with filmmaking trends and controversies, but in general, I like it to be a fun and humorous atmosphere.

Except sometimes, fun and humorous just isn't in the works. There are days where putting something down on paper or in a simple text document on your computer screen becomes unbearably hard, because you can't process some of the thoughts in your head. Sometimes you just don't want to, and doing anything but writing is preferable to confronting your own truth.

If you wonder why this is such a big thing to me, it's because I am writing for my health. Apart from finding out everything to which I am allergic recently so that I can breath easier and not wanting to throw up all the time, and going cold turkey on soda pop and potato chips -- and keeping to 1800 calories a day max -- to get the weight down (lost over ten pounds in the very first week), and making sure to get out for extended walks daily for exercise. Those I am doing for my physical health. The writing is key to my mental health.

To be blunt, a couple of years ago, I was doing what is called in the health industry as "suicidal ideation". I wasn't trying to commit suicide. I was just ruminating on it at length. We would be someplace swell like the Grand Californian Hotel at Disneyland, and while the rest of the family was figuring out what to wear to dinner at Napa Rose that evening, I was sitting on a fifth floor hotel room balcony trying to divine the angle and perfect way to jump to make sure I did myself in properly and didn't survive the leap. Walking to a job I hated increasingly each morning had me pausing on the overpass above the 91 and musing on whether it would be better to hit the freeway first and then get railed by a car, or to wait for a semi to come barreling down the road. (Thinking about the safety of others does not enter your brain at those moments.)

It was not a romantic thing for me. I was in pain. I traced it initially to the death of one of our sweet dogs, Isabelle, with whom I bonded even greater as I worked from home while she went through a couple of months of chemotherapy that failed to destroy the tumors overtaking her small body. I got too close, and when we had to take her in, I held on to her as they put her under. This was a massive mistake for me, as I had never been with any of my former pet friends as they succumbed, and feeling her body makes its last shudder has stuck with me ever since. And it is not something I wish to repeat.

As I said, I traced it to that period, but I have always been prone to depression; I just had never been diagnosed with it. I had periods like this when I lived in Alaska, but I mostly kept them hidden. And it has gotten worse since moving to California; though all seemed peachy to me at first, I was going through it all the same. While the first few years at the place were glorious to me, I lay most of the blame at my inability to deal with my job at that time as a writer, editor and communications manager. It was for a company of which the office staff is still composed entirely of wonderful people with which to work on a daily basis, but has a board which is largely comprised of bitter, abusive jerks. As the jerks overrode the daily workings of the office setting, my need to be removed from that atmosphere increased. I saw no way out, as I am not prone to walking away from such situations. My previous job lasted for 22 years, from the time I was 18 until I was 40, and in that time, while I encountered people with whom I did not work easily, I outlasted them all (and in a couple of cases, befriended them and came around to their side).

In this new situation, as I had been in the job for a few years already, I knew full well it was really getting to me. I just didn't know what to do about it. Jen would tell me to quit and find something else, but I didn't know what that meant. I just couldn't comprehend quitting. A job, that is, because I certainly quit other things. For instance, once Isabelle got sick, I quit writing. I could no longer bear to put my fingers on a keyboard if I wasn't being paid to do it. My personal writing dried up. I still considered myself a writer and editor because I was doing it professionally, but everything else that I had been working on at home -- the regular blog, short stories, comic strip scripts, and a screenplay for a monster movie I wanted to make one day -- not only got squashed, but in some cases, all of my notes and work to that point were thrown in the trash.

Instead of quitting the job that was slowly devouring my soul, I gave up on happiness outside of it. I still showed up at work and was friendly with my co-workers (many of whom I still adore and speak to or text with occasionally). But I wanted out more and more each day. Gradually, those feelings began to gnaw at me as I left the house. Somedays, assuming that most bosses were not great when dealing with mental issues, I would feign a physical illness, and then turn around on the street, go home, and curl into a ball. Somedays, I would be at the bus stop or even halfway to walking to work, and I would have to turn back, so upset I would get at the thought of walking through those office doors, even though none of what was bothering me was likely to be inside the office that day.

One morning, nearly two years ago, I thought that I was doing fine. I put on my headphones to stomp my way to the bus stop. I had my workday planned out in my head, and on mornings when I was feeling great, one of the bands I liked to listen to was Blur, and especially, what I believe is their best album, Parklife. I had left off listening to the album the previous day with Magic America, the thirteenth track, set to play next. The band's wonderful mocking of my home country finished, and then the band zipped through Jubilee, a raucous, semi-punky number that usually gets me going pretty well. But my mind by that point had started to dwell on more mundane, earthbound things. The dog was in there; yes, even a year away, I was still reeling from that. And so were some things from the job that were going on that involved some demands from the board president and a couple of his toadies. I had sort of stopped listening directly to Jubilee by the time it was done, and was more into drowning slowly in my own thoughts. I remember telling myself to stop doing what I was doing, because it would begin to hurt.

And then This is a Low started. My favorite song on Parklife, a gorgeous, almost pastoral early on but swelling ballad that is largely based around a British shipping forecast, with references to areas in the sea around England, and with the biggest reference in the title itself (and lovely chorus) to a low-pressure weather system. To some, the song could sound nonsensical if you don't understand the names mentioned in it; it did to me at first, almost like something Lewis Carroll put together, with its "Tyne Forth and Cramity" phrases. But like any song, the lyrics can be interpreted by the listener to fit the demands in their life.

Through my half listening to the exceedingly familiar lyrics, my brain started making connections that it shouldn't (or couldn't) help. Singer/songwriter Damon Albarn sings...

"And into the sea goes pretty England and me..."

at the very start of the song, and my mind latched onto it immediately. The rest of the verse, if you don't know the song, heads straight into nautical references and place names, to where it is, at least on the surface, not seemingly about the depressive state that I was experiencing. But I knew that monster of a chorus was coming up:

"This is a low
But it won't hurt you
When you are alone
It will be there with you
Finding ways to stay solo"

In my interpretation of the song, that final line is not heard as "solo," but rather as "so low," especially given how Albarn spreads out the syllables when he sings it. At this point, starting to near the turn to the last corner before it was a straight shot to the bus stop, my heart is hurting. Not physically, but the opposite of the way when you are lovesick, with your heart beating in the bloody hands of an uncaring enemy. I was starting to feel a sickening sweat run over every inch of my body, as I married the song's words to my own unclear thoughts. And then the final lines of the second verse were sung:

"And the queen, she's gone round the bend
Jumped off land's end..."

and I lost it completely. In my mind, I saw myself falling, falling, falling over and over again. I started crying uncontrollably as a jogging couple that I saw every morning with their bull terrier gave me the usual nod, along with a curious look as they kept moving. I made it to the crosswalk, and dropped to the ground. I was still crying and shaking, and I had to tear the headphones off my ears. I couldn't listen to the music anymore as I sat there on the sidewalk and held my head in my hands. After a few minutes, somehow I gathered myself together just enough to get up and cross the street, with tears cutting canyons of shame down my cheeks. I made it the final 400 yards to the bus stop, and within seconds, I was on the bus. (My bawling time ate up the normal few minutes under the shade of the bus stop that I used to cool down from my brisk walk.)

On that bus were people that I saw quite regularly, some with whom I often had morning conversations. And here I was, cheeks (the upstairs ones) wet and salty, and still shaking nervously. One lady not of my acquaintance handed me a tissue and asked if I were okay. "Just having a bit of a breakdown," I replied. "Thanks." I took the tissue, and start crying anew with everyone (about a dozen people) staring at me. Everything was in slow motion on that bus, but luckily, it was a relatively short trip to the stop across from work. Once there, however, I wasn't any better. I was considering just going back home, but I had some duties that required me to work from the office that day, as they were more easily performed on the PC at work rather than on my Mac (I much prefer using Excel on a PC). And so I made to cross the street at the light.

Then a stray thought hit my brain. Tears started to well up, and then they started to roll anew. I was staring into the fast moving traffic running parallel to me as I made to cross, and I stopped, mesmerized by it. The cars were going only 40 mph -- 45 tops -- but I knew that if I just casually sidled my way into that rushing mix, it would likely be over for me, especially if that first car threw me just right. I stood staring at the traffic while standing about four feet out into the walkway, but then reality set in, and I realized that the cars from the opposite direction were starting their turn to swing left, where I happened to be. I jumped back out of their way -- nobody was near me, as they did see me standing there -- but it showed that I still had a care about not ending up hurt or dead. I didn't want to end up, as Frank Zappa sang, as a "suicide chump".

I crossed with the next green light and made it to the office. My face was red and flushed and wet as I unlocked the front door. We were not yet open to the public, so the doors were locked, but several of the staff were on hand already. Our maintenance person, Cindy, was there in the kitchen, and she came out and saw my condition. "Are you OK?," she asked. "No. I think I might be having a breakdown." Her reply was "Well, don't." It was the sort of response I would have given her in the same situation, such was our repartee, but it made me start crying all over again. I just left the room and ran up the stairs to my office, where I sat in the dark for a little bit and tried to calm myself down.

When my partner Logan arrived and came into the office with all the lights and even computers off, he was quizzical. I told him what happened, and he said matter-of-factly, "So, what do you need to do?" "Get some help," was my meek reply. He said, "Good." When my boss Bill came in (who is perhaps one of the kindest people you would ever want to meet in these sort of circumstances),  I told him that I was going to call my doctor and see about getting in to see a therapist. Calling the hospital, I was told that it was unlikely that I would get to see one in the same day unless I went straight to the emergency room. I called my wife Jen to pick me up, and we headed to UCI.

Here's the thing about the emergency room. If you are going in for a possible mental health issue like I was, you have to fill out a 5150 form (the one mentioned in the Van Halen title). Basically, I had to sign something that said that if it was determined that I was a legitimate threat to myself or to others while I was under their care that day, that they could hold me until it was safely determined otherwise. That is an eye opener. In my case, I still had hold of my senses to a very large degree, and was able to understand the hot water into which I had plunged. Yes, I was having a definite problem, but I was pretty certain I wasn't going crazy. 

To point this out even further, Jen and I had to wait to see a therapist in a small 8' x 5' room with only seven chairs and two doors, with a security guard at one of the doors keeping an eye on me. He was exceedingly nice, made small talk with both of us, and even grabbed bottles of water for us as we waited for what was estimated could be up to four or five hours. It ended up being far less, just a couple, but the wait was made more interesting by the addition of one extra security person with an actual crazy person: a guy who muttered to himself constantly, was fighting with at least one demon unseen to us, and who waved his hands in wild motions all around his head for the roughly one hour we were in his presence. His presence alone made me feel a bit better, because how could I possibly be considered to be losing it with such an example around?

When I finally got in to see an emergency therapist, I thought it was going well. My vitals were fine, with the usual high blood pressure, and we talked for well over an hour about what happened that morning (all of which I have related here almost two years later). He then wanted to have a discussion with Jen to see if she was alright, and if I had caused any problems that I wasn't willing to share openly with him. After that, I was treated for what I thought was mild depression, and released.

Two weeks later, I could barely stay awake. I couldn't focus on my work or watching a movie or reading. I drifted in and out of everything. I might as well have been a zombie in a mental ward, except that I wasn't drooling. I had been put on Seroquel by the physician at the emergency, and had no idea it was a drug more commonly used for bipolar disorder, and was in fact, a real pain in the ass of a medication. However, because I had done the shortcut through the emergency room, it enabled me to get a referral to a regular therapist at the hospital, and after my first visit with the doctor, I finally started to see things a little more positively. First off, he wondered why they had put me on Seroquel, because he saw not the slightest sign that I was bipolar. It was a mystery to me, I replied, and he switched me to a much less intrusive medication, Effexor.

For over a year, Dr. Boombatz (not his real name... duh) and I discovered two common themes in my therapeutic revival. The first was that I hated my job. HATED IT. For the first few months, he would act astounded as I brought in stories about the crazy demands of our board, and of the temperamental manner in which some of them behaved. He spent the last seven months of our time together constantly suggesting to me that I should just quit the job and go elsewhere. When I resisted and came up with excuses, he would shrug his shoulders, and say "Why not? Why would you stay?" I found this odd to me, and a little cavalier of an attitude for a therapist, but he was completely right. Why should I stay? (But I did. And just a little too long.)

The second theme that came out in these sessions -- and let me tell you, after a lifelong cynicism about his profession, I thoroughly shifted the other way regarding psychiatric therapy -- was my love of writing. It was so clear that my happiness was tied completely to getting things out on paper, a white board, a computer screen... somewhere. Just not kept in my head. We discussed writing in nearly every session that wasn't dominated by that week's crisis. And while I was not posting again online through all of this, I had started writing again, creating a couple of short stories and outlining several others in that span, and I had already begun to feel more confidence.

Getting fired eventually from that horrible job situation for insubordination (really, what took them so long?) fairly shattered that confidence again, as I have found it exceedingly difficult to pin down new employment in the intervening months. Not long after getting fired, my time with Dr. Boombatz ended. He weaned me off of the Effexor over the last couple of months, and left me to my own devices. It is now only a little later in the year from end of that job and my therapy, but it might as well be light years. We are in a new living arrangement, in a new city, and in a new house. Though I do have my real doctor's personal info if I feel myself slipping again, my new doctor has now become the written word.

Cut to today. I felt myself slipping a little over the past 24 hours, after an exceedingly depressing dentist visit, and money worries hit me harder than they often do. I began to resort to old bad habits in my thought processes, and was unable to use my usual stops to prevent this. When I woke up this morning, while I had planned on knocking out a fluff review about a movie that I really enjoyed to post on this blog, I no longer felt like it. I spent my morning cleaning the bedroom and office, goofing around with my cat, and staring out the window. I would keep approaching the review, but after a couple of sentences more, the drive to complete it would dissipate.

But I knew that I had to write. I don't necessarily have to write every single day, but I would rather that I did. I know it is too hard to get caught in traps, and ones that are most often of our own design. Such are the ones in my mind, that make me indifferent to everything the second I lose concentration, and that keep me from picking up pen and putting it to paper for longer and longer periods the more I resist it.

And so I told you this story, world. I have shared it in person with several people, some of whom are within its text and will now read it again. If you are coming to this blog from the Countdown to Halloween website and have discovered nothing in these words about our shared favored holiday, I apologize. But this needed to come out of me. I had yet to write it down, and if there is anything I have learned over the last few years, its that I need to get things out of my head for me to move forward. Hopefully, this will prove fruitful to me.

Now, on to that fluff review...

A Preparatory Indulgence, Pt. 1: I've Been Here, I've Been Working on Something, and There Is No Problem

The title above holds the answers to the questions most often asked of me over the past couple of months, during which time it seems I have taken some form of hiatus, purposeful or otherwise, from the Cinema 4 Pylon: "Where have you been?" "What the hell are you up to? You haven't been writing lately." "What's the problem now? Are you in another one of your funks?" Emails, phone calls, up close and personal... this is what I have heard, and not just from the usual suspects.

It's funny how you can write and write and write your ass off, and only a couple of committed, caring friends (and the odd stranger or two) will comment here and there, and you will begin to feel as if you were just another voice lost in the uncaring wilderness of the internet.

But, take an uncharacteristic amount of time away from something that people have locked you into their minds as being the sum of your being, and they begin to notice. Lately, I have received batches of concerned emails relating to this topic, along with a few comments on old posts to which I didn't bother to respond, and even Twitter messages from people with whom I am only lightly acquainted who have at least wondered where all the movie review tweets have gone.

This is all very nice, and I appreciate that some people have noticed my disappearance from the online world. But, here's what I thought was the truth: as of early September, I had grown sick of the internet.

After a few short months of testing, I came to believe that Twitter was essentially useless as a real communication tool, and rather just the latest and possibly worst form of networking pollution -- chiefly mindless blather trying to out-shriek the rest of the chiefly mindless blather, much of it scrubbed of context and therefore lacking any real impact. Facebook had become unmanageable to me once I reconnected with dozens of people from the past that I never really knew anyway. A precious few are grand old friends with whom I am glad to refresh our acquaintance, but then they throw their friends from the old days at you, and they don't realize (and often get hurt when they find out) that you really have no wish to know those other "old friends" anymore. Largely, this is because you never liked them in the first place (and most likely, they never liked you either). Worst of all, for weeks I dreaded opening my email accounts for fear of actually having to communicate with anyone. And when I did answer, I found, because I had not been paying very close attention to the run of things on the internet, that it would most likely would have been better had I not ever replied to anything at all. I had taken myself out of the loop, and even considering playing the slightest bit of catch-up had become both loathsome and monumentally difficult for me.

And so, for the most part, I disappeared online. A couple of email replies here and there kept the dread going; a mere handful of tweets throughout September and October showed that I was fighting whatever this creeping malaise happened to be. There were even brief moments where I tried to push back at it, and announced boldly m return to online life. (Well, if you can call saying anything in the cavernous depths of either Twitter or Facebook saying being truly bold -- which neither action is.) And while it is fun to think that perhaps this mood is merely just another syndrome amongst the thousands either identified or created to help us inch our way through the modern world -- let's throw a charming acronym or a smartly dressed abbreviation at it! -- the fact is that my attention has been diverted, and interacting online with the electronic world of faceless others has simply not been shown to be important enough to wash away the impression that I have disappeared.

But I have been around, and I have been busy, quite busy. Indeed, I have been quite deeply engaged for two to three months now. While I have been writing to some small degree, that activity has not been on anything to which this website directly relates, and it has not been the center of my attention. Writing is still the most important thing to me, and will prove to be the ultimate beneficiary of what I have been up to over the last two months. In fact, you could call my efforts "research" to the largest degree, or rather, a preparatory indulgence. What I have been doing will likely seem idiotic to some and markedly obsessive to all, but those who have similar addictions to the world of the cinema, those who feel lost within their own personal realms, and even anyone even the tiniest bit OCD will fully understand. (Yea, modern syndromes!)

To fully impart the madness into which I locked myself through the lateness of summer, though, I should divulge what led me to this point...

(To be continued in A Preparatory Indulgence, Pt. 2...)