I ate 5 lbs of food in a half-hour at Padrino Italian restaurant

In the winter of 2014, my sisters and I went out for dinner at Padrino Italian, a restaurant in Milford, Ohio. I can't remember exactly what I ate there (I don't have Hyperthymesia), though I do remember enjoying it. But my dominant memory of the experience was seeing the following challenge in its menu:

In case you can't read that for some reason, here is the description of "The $30 Spaghetti & Meatball Challenge":

Spaghetti & Meatball Challenge

2lbs. of spaghetti, 1lb. of meatballs, 1 lb. of marinara & garlic knots. Finish it and it’s FREE! Plus receive a free t-shirt and your picture on the wall of fame. 45 minute time limit. No excusing yourself from the table and NO RETURNS.. if you know what we mean?

When I first saw this, I knew immediately that attempting this challenge was my destiny. Much as mountain climber George Mallory wished to climb Mt. Everest "because it is there," I desired to conquer the Padrino's challenge.

I was, moreover, confident that I would succeed. For I have always loved food beyond the mere physical necessity of requiring it to live. Indeed, often in my life this passion has swung dangerously close to indulgence, and perhaps even to gluttony, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Pictured: My death?

Fortunately, I recognized my immoderate tendencies many years ago. But instead of suppressing them, I balanced them against further immoderation in the opposite direction: I gave up junk food, dessert, candy, and pop; and I dedicated myself fully to running, a pursuit that just so happens to require a bunch of food to sustain. Between these two steps, I could still eat a lot (just ask any one of my running teammates over the years), but not constantly, and never unhealthily. My appetite did not recede; I just tried to satisfy it with healthier foods.

Which is exactly why I set my sights on the pasta-laden Padrino's Challenge. Though I held off from it for many months, it lingered in my mind. I was just waiting for the right time. When the opportunity to meet up for dinner with my old friend Ethan Bokeno, whom I ran against and befriended in high school, the weekend I was returning to Cincinnati for my twin sister's graduation, I insisted that we go to Padrino and try the challenge, and he accepted.

With my plans established, I went about preparing for the challenge--acclimatizing, if you will, to keep up the wildly overwrought Everest analogy. Quite unlike preparing to climb Everest, preparing for the Padrino's challenge did not require much hardship on my part. Two weeks before the scheduled date, I prepared and then consumed an entire pan of Chicken Parmesan, just to see if I could. It turns out that I was not only capable of this, but capable of eating it in about 15 minutes. I deemed this a satisfying proof of concept.

This week, leading up to the challenge, I didn't change much. I ate slightly less than usual day-to-day, but didn't reduce my caloric intake by so much that my stomach would shrink. Until the day before, that is. On that day, I ate a light dinner. And then on April 29, the day of, I ate only a yogurt for breakfast (at 3 am; I had a plane to catch), ran a fast 9 miles a few hours before the challenge, and ate only a half of an apple before journeying to Padrino for the challenge. Before entering, I boldly declared the following to the world, well aware that I might be inviting a nemesis to my hubris, a comeuppance to my arrogance, by doing so:

[Jack Butler] is about to attempt to eat 3 pounds of spaghetti, 1 pound of meatballs, and one pound of rolls in 45 minutes with no restroom breaks. It'll be free if he finishes it (plus a shirt and a spot on the Padrino Italian Wall of Fame), and $30 if he fails.
But he won't fail.

I then walked into the restaurant with my friend and moral support for the evening. We both got menus. He ordered first, choosing a pizza. When Josh, our waiter, turned to me, I told him that I came here for one thing and one thing only: the Padrino's challenge. His calm face registered a small twitch of surprise, and then he asked me if I were sure about it. I told him yes, and he said he'd get it ready.

In the interim, my friend and I caught up with each other, and I experienced a nervousness somewhat comparable to that I feel before starting a race. Could I really do this? What if I couldn't finish? What if I thew up? Such thoughts raced around my nervous brain until my waiter emerged from the kitchen with this:


Appearances aside, this actually looked less intimidating than I expected. But I was still afraid that I wouldn't finish. Before firing the starting gun, Josh the Waiter announced to the restaurant that "if anyone cares, this man is about to attempt the Padrino Challenge...to eat all of this in 45 minutes, with no bathroom breaks." I started my own watch concurrently with his, and then I began.

My strategy all along was to eat as quickly as possible. My knowledge of my own metabolism and digestive system, combined with the well-known tendency of pasta to expand in the stomach, suggested this would be the best course. So, after saying grace ("I need God on my side for this," I told my dinner companion), putting the rolls aside for later and cutting the handful of large meatballs into smaller, more manageable pieces, I attacked like an animal the giant bowl of pasta before me. When I found the center too hot to eat fast, my dining companion suggested that I start at the sides, where the food would be cooler. Occasionally, I offered witticisms to my dinner companion between mouthfuls, wondering whether the other people in the restaurant thought I was an animal, whether the staff thought my relatively skinny outward frame could truly stomach the challenge, and whether we truly live in an America where, as a recent Onion headline read, a "Restaurant's Extreme Burger Challenge" could be "Moved Down To Regular Menu." 

As my efforts continued, and I found myself nearly halfway done with my meal with less than one-third of the time expired, I began to become something of a cause in the restaurant. Staff walking in and out of the kitchen and tending to other customers cast smiling glances at me, noting my progress; patrons, enthralled by my progress, began to move to my side. "He's really gonna do it!" said one. "Good job" said another. And "only in America," said I, "would other restaurant patrons encourage me in this way. Well, maybe in Germany. But it wouldn't be this food. It would be beer and bratwurst or something." Elated by the support, by my progress, and by my stomach's not yet feeling the effects of my rapid consumption, I began to feel quite good about my prospects for completion.

And then I hit the Wall. In a marathon, another outrageous thing to compare my competitive gluttony to (especially since I haven't run one...yet), the Wall is when the marathon goes from hard to really, really hard. It separates the wheat from the chaff, the mere completists from the racers. I began to hit my food Wall when my dining companion decided to use the restroom, a privilege allowed him but not denied me. Alone, my resolve faltered. My stomach rebelled. The pasta and meatballs I had stuffed down my esophagus made several attempts to climb back out. It seemed all too likely that vomit, an outcome I had feared from the beginning, would soon follow. I began to lose hope.

But then I realized all that was at stake. And even though it wasn't really all that much--having to pay $30 for my meal, losing a shirt and a promised spot on the Padrino Wall of Fame--there was something far greater at stake: My pride. With my pride on the line, and aided by my inborn stubbornness, I carefully forced out a few strategic burps. From them, I got a second wind. By the time my dining companion returned to our table, I was back at my plate again, less than a third of my meal to go. Though my pace slowed a little, I still had plenty of time left. So I carefully cleaned my plate, and then triumphantly moved it aside, though not before asking Josh the Waiter "does this count as finished?"




With about 25 minutes still to go, I then moved onto the rolls I had moved aside at the beginning of my meal. Many of you know of my love of bread; these were really just footnotes to something I had already completed. But I still had to eat them to complete the challenge. So I ate them leisurely, taking each in with four roughly coequal bites. And though it was just bread, this was a surprisingly difficult part of the challenge. It took me a while to get halfway through, and when I finished the third, I suddenly began to worry that I would not finish, and that my old nightmare of never being able to accomplish anything to my own satisfaction, of always falling just short, would resurface, that the roll, or even the last bite of the last roll, would undo me. In the middle of the restaurant, I recited my own shorthand for existential dissatisfaction, a few verses from Tennyson's "Ulysses" I memorized from high school:

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

 Or, if you prefer something a bit more lowbrow:

But in truth I suffered neither fate. I spent a lot of time chewing my last bite of bread, but I finished it all the same. It took me 30:25, a time I wish were my 10k PR; I had 14:35 left, a time I wish were my 5k PR. Upon completion, I raised my arms in the air and summoned Josh the waiter, who congratulated me upon my victory. In keeping with the terms of the challenge, he presented a bill only to my dining companion, and went to fish me out a shirt. Alas, they didn't have any in my size; I gave them my information, so I'll get it at a later time, which I'm all right with. I'm less all right with the apparent disappearance of the Padrino's Wall of Fame, but I have this blog to immortalize my experience, so I'm still OK with that. When I finally felt good enough to be able to stand, I asked to take a picture with Josh, my waiter, who currently wears a manbun identical to the one I sported this time last year (my shirt, by the way, will be identical to his).

Josh was a good sport. 

  

Before I left Padrino, I asked Josh if he thought I would be capable of completing the challenge when I sat down at his table. "No," he admitted. "I thought you were just some guy who walked in here hungry and chose the biggest thing on the menu." Before I told him, he had no idea that I'd had the Padrino challenge on my mind for more than a year. Regardless, he was impressed, and promised to get me my shirt. I thanked him, and then walked out, a conquering hero.

So what have I learned from this experience? Many things. First, go to Padrino, even if you don't attempt the challenge. It's a nice restaurant in a great location with a good atmosphere, pleasant staff, friendly patrons, and good food. Second, it seems my 22-year-old metabolism is still burning strong; staying in good running shape, of course, helps. Third, It's possible that I've missed my calling--or at least a calling--by not starting to do these eating challenges earlier in my life. In fact, now that I've proven I can do this sort of thing, I may do it more often. But, finally, I've also learned that even my own body has limits. Apart from the difficult Wall phase of my challenge, there is also the obvious fact that I have barely moved since I returned home after my victory. Even with the running-enhanced metabolism of a 22-year-old male, I can only do so much. But the fact that I can eat this much means that I better keep running. Otherwise, I may suffer an unfortunate fate.

Pictured: My future?

"Zen and the Art of Running" - 5 years later

My copy of Zen. If you look closely, you can see the shadow of my phone and hand taking the picture.

Five years ago this spring, I read Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, which I highly recommend. The 1974 nonfiction book turns a long motorcycle journey undertaken by the author and his son into a meditation on philosophy. Pirsig disagrees with much of conventional Western philosophy, suggesting in its place a metaphysics of "Quality."

I may never have heard of this book were it not for one Larry Merkel, a former St.Xavier High School English teacher (and extremely successful track and cross country coach) who assigned it to my senior year AP English Language class in 2011. It affected me profoundly, and changed the way I look at the world.

But Mr. Merkel didn't just have us read it. After we finished the book, he gave us perhaps the most open-ended writing assignment I've ever received: To write a "response" to the book. He was very flexible--coy, even--about what he meant by that--by design, of course. He wanted us to reproduce in a paper what Zen meant to us. And since the book affects each of its readers differently, he could not possibly have provided the guidelines one would have expected for an ordinary academic paper.

I took this prompt and ran with it--literally. For on page 59 of the book, I scribbled in the margins: "ZEN AND RUNNING?" And when I received Mr. Merkel's prompt, it didn't take me long to figure out what I wanted to write about: Zen and the Art of Running, the eventual title of my essay. I got Merkel's tacit approval when I approached him with that very basic idea, but I still had to write the darn thing. My goal was to crystallize into essay form the way that running--which I had been doing seriously for four years by that point--interacted with and affected my body, my mind, my worldview, and, indeed, my very existence.

Pictured: The page from my copy of Zen where the idea where my essay was born.

The result was the essay below, written mostly in one sitting, and originally posted here. Please read it, and keep reading after you finish (or just skip to when it's over), as I have posted my own thoughts about the thing I wrote 5 years after I wrote it.

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“DRIP DROP DRIP DROP DRIP DROP…”

A steady rain resonates infinitely in the cold midmorning hours. It neither rages itself upon the earth in immense volume, nor gently caresses the earth with appreciated nourishment. No, this particular instance of precipitation has decided to position itself at the terrible middle of these two tolerable extremes—not hard enough for a delightful feeling of accomplishment to be gained simply for having endured it, not light enough to be ignored. Synthesized with typical Cincinnati gray skies, low temperatures, and cold winds, it is enough to give me pause before I engage on my morning run, and so here I stand in my garage, staring intently at a puddle of water in my driveway as it absorbs drop after drop after drop after drop after drop…of water. Wishing to delay the task, I turn to my thoughts, constant and trustworthy allies in my perpetual war against boredom, and let them wander, seeking some respite.
            Why do you run? It is on days such as these, especially, when I pose this question to myself, as I imagine all runners do from time to time. Some manage to suppress the interrogation better than I, some worse, but all are plagued by a need and engaged in a search for that sometimes elusive Motivation, from the shuffling walk-joggers to the fittest of marathoners, and everyone in between. Falling somewhere in that spectrum, I continue to ask myself: why do you run? I am rather perturbed and disturbed by the fact that I am unable to come quickly to an answer—my hesitation is a sign of weakness, of a lack of dedication. But who cares anyway? So what if you take a day off…you’ve been working hard lately. Harder than you’ve ever worked before, actually. Maybe you deserve a day off. It’s just one day! You haven’t missed a day in weeks! Surely I would appreciate it. Hey, maybe that’s why the rain and the wind and the temperature are all as they are—the weather gods are giving you a gift. If that’s the case, then who are you to offend the gods? Why not indulge in the honor they have bestowed upon you? Those wonderful meals which you always allow yourself after a run can, in fact, be eaten when you don’t run. They’ll taste just as good. And they’re a lot closer to you than is the completion of this run. All you have to do is tell me to turn around, walk about five steps, open the door, step into your house, the house which invites and beckons you inward with its warmth, comfort, heat, relaxation…and there they are. You can get the rewards of the run…without the run. Why not? Why not do that? It’s so much easier!
            But I run for a team, and a damn good one at that. And not only do I run for this team. It also happens to count on me to be a model of accountability, dedication, persistence…all of those traits which separate average runners from the good, good from great, great from excellent, etc. I would not be able to live with myself were I to skip a day, nor would I be able to exhort my teammates to live up to the standards which I set for myself, after having failed to live them out. I can’t skip today. My team needs me. Yeah, but what are you going to do when you don’t run for a team? Sure, you’ve got a track season left with this one, and then four years in college with one…but then what? What will be your “Motivation” when you’re running the roads completely and utterly alone, your only impetus being selfish? Will you then defect to the ranks of the unmotivated, the lazy, and the uninspired? It seems so. After all, you can’t run forever…right? I sure won’t let you. I mean, you have to stop sometime, don’t you? Running is already painful for me, and once you and I get into your 30s, it sure won’t be getting any better, that’s for sure (I’ll make sure of it). What will keep you going through ever increasing amounts of pain, of suffering, of anguish? Through future volleys of snow, wind, and rain? Through days where it’s just, oh, too inconvenient to run, and, gosh, you just don’t have the time? An object at rest tends to stay at rest. Every object in the universe seeks a state of lower energy. It’s simple physics, the way of the universe. How long will you be able to defy the laws of physics? And the pain…over the past year, especially, there’s been pain in every part of me, especially the legs (not to mention our lungs, stomach, arms…)—hips, thighs, knees, shins, calves…I’ve had it all. It sucks. With each new pain, you feared injury. How long can you continue with that anxiety, the fear that, crap, maybe this one is it? It’s torment to you now, as a 17-year-old…what will you think when we’re 30? 40? 50?
            My body makes a rather convincing case. It is, after all, the one who must bear the brunt of my masochistic insanities, day in and day out, during runs, after runs…maybe I should listen to it, just for once? The door is right there, closer to me, as it said, than the completion of this run. Should I give in just this once, just this once? What harm could it do? Sure, I’ll miss one day, but I won’t tell anyone, I know that. It will be a secret between myself and my body, and of those two, the latter will certainly be happy about it, so why shouldn’t the former? It’s just one day…and that one day might help me feel better for whatever I run tomorrow. It’s a win-win, right? Right? You’ve got it. Now just turn around, and give me a break, just for once. Just for once. Come on, you know you want to. Please, for both of our sakes. I look toward the door, discern the yellow light leaking from its faintly unhinged perimeter, then the rest of my body, as if on its own, begins to turn itself toward the door…yes, come on, please, just this once…

            “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

            My wandering thoughts suddenly recall that verse from Scripture. It’s one of my personal favorites. Why, though? Why that particular verse, a mere sentence long in a book full of wisdom? Perhaps it’s the elegant simplicity…the shortness….no, I know why—it’s the context: it was spoken by Jesus while He was praying in the Garden for “this cup to pass from His lips” or something like that. He asked some of the disciples to keep watch, and admonishes them with that line when they fall asleep on the job. Jesus, as Christians are supposed to understand Him, was the only human who was able to bridge that eternal chasm between body and spirit, between who we are and who we want to be, between ambition and perfection….yet even He wanted some relief from the task before Him. He was both God, and man…in the Garden, He showed the man. And we are called to be like Him, who bridged that gap, even though we can never mimic the feat.
            Oh come on now, you think you’re Jesus? I’d call that blasphemy if it weren’t so stupid. Come on, the house is warm, and it’s starting to rain harder. All the food you want to eat is in there, so just go in and eat it, okay? I think there’s an unread Wall Street Journal in there also…you can read it. It will be great! I stare at the door, then look back at my driveway, at that puddle to which I had earlier directed my gaze. I could tell by the frequency of the drops in that puddle that my body was right; it was, indeed, raining harder. Yet it had still not reached that ridiculous threshold in which it would become a matter of pride just to be out in that sort of weather. Thus, I am caught between the door and the driveway. One leads to immediate comfort, relaxation, warmth…but also to guilt, imperfection, and indulgence. The other leads to pain, suffering, anguish, wetness…but also to gradual improvement, a feeling of accomplishment, and a profound sense of satisfaction. I can’t get any of those things without the pain, without putting in the miles. If there is a secret to running that is it: there is no secret. The only way to improve is through consistency—and the beautiful simplicity of that truth is too much for some people to handle. They want to believe that there is some magic that keeps us all going every day…but there isn’t. Well, then, what does?
            My body is launching a desperate campaign to convince me to turn back. I must defeat its wishes, but first I must answer its question, because, well, I can’t run without it. We have to run as one. What keeps me going every day? It’s the gap between flesh and spirit, between who I am and who I want to be, and my desire to bridge it. But you never will! So why bother? I know I’ll never bridge that gap. But to try is the essence of the human experience, and not just according to Christianity—just look at any religion, philosophy, or even some of our best poetry:

“Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!”

and music:

“I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for”

Running, in my life, is simultaneously one of the best ways to and one of the clearest examples of how I can bridge the gap, to unite my two disparate selves. Limited as I am by the trappings of my humanity—I must experience pain, weather, injury, etc—I can achieve, not despite all of that, but because of it;  I can improve, I can satisfy, even if, in the case of the latter, that satisfaction is fleeting. That’s why I have to run every day. Running is a perpetual quest for self-improvement, and it’s only through my interaction between by feet and whatever surface on which they happen to tread that day that I can improve. And since both pain and success are produced by that interaction, pain is a good thing—pain is Quality. Improvement does not exist without suffering; there is no progress without cost. These are truths that transcend running, that speak at once to our greatest hopes and our worst fears—through ambition, I am my own best friend; through limitation, my own worst enemy.
But the faster, the harder I go, the better I become: To discover my limits, to test them, and to burst through them (or “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”)—a process to be repeated ad infinitum. It may not be easy, but, “we do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” as Kennedy put it. An object at rest may indeed tend to remain at rest, but an object in motion tends to stay in motion. That is the half of Newton which my body chooses to ignore, but it is just as—no, it’s more important. I run because I need to, because I have to, and because I want to. What truly makes those post-running meals so delicious is that I have earned them. The best achievements in life are not deserved, but earned.
            And so I take one last look at the door, and then step out into the cold, the wind, the rain. It’s terrible…and wonderful. I take a few steps, and then, upon leaving my driveway, I begin. Stride begets stride, pump begets pump, and, soon enough, I am running. Today is probably one of those days where drivers and passersby will look at me and think I’m crazy. Good. I am. I’m also a masochist. But we all are, or, at least, we should be, and I hope I inspire them to join me someday. Struggles should be embraced, not avoided; for it is through these interactions between subject and object that the paths to self-improvement can be found. Through that quest to fuse our actual selves and our ideal selves, we can come ever closer to a dimension of the infinite manifest in the human experience, seeking unity with the rest of mankind, and even the universe at large—the pinnacle of selflessness.
As I run, pain shoots through my body, as if with a vengeance—a vestige of my body’s resistance. It will always be there. So I do not ignore it. I embrace it, bringing it into my being. Throughout this run, I must and do endure often rigorous levels of it to finish. But with each step, I come closer to that ideal self, that better me out there, running somewhere. Maybe he and I will run together someday…someday. But for now, with each bit of anguish, I grimace, and then smile.

Ouch…that’s Quality. 

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5 years later, this essay is, most prominently, a time capsule. It takes me back to exactly how I felt when I was a 17-year-old soon-to-graduate high school senior who had spent four years running for a team he grew to love. It well summarizes my experience as a runner up to that point--not so much the pleasures, but more so many of the pains, struggles, and the disappointments of my past. It also points toward some of the anxieties I was having then about the future. I think I had just recently decided where I was going to college (and for whom I would run in college) after many months of typical indecisive agony, but I had no idea what that was going to be like (and could not possibly have predicted the things that I would experience). 

It also encapsulates many of the other things I was obsessing over during that time in my life: Tennyson's poem "Ulysses," U2's song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," the "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" passage from Scripture, etc. All of it pointed to a vast existential longing I had at this time, informed by the struggles of my then-recent past and my worries about my future. Caught between both in the present, I had no idea what I wanted to do or to be, and was, as a result, searching for something I didn't quite know. At least, that's how I remember my 17-year-old self.

As for running in the essay: I'm amazed how well my description of the experience of running holds up--for me, anyway. 5 years later, after spending four years running with an entirely different group of people, I still often agonize internally about running when I don't feel like doing it, feel pain in every part of my body, and still sometimes want just to be at the end of a run rather than have to experience the run itself. And, more important, I am still running, though I haven't exactly covered myself in glory lately.

Which brings me to the part of the essay that I found most haunting:

Yeah, but what are you going to do when you don’t run for a team? Sure, you’ve got a track season left with this one, and then four years in college with one…but then what? What will be your “Motivation” when you’re running the roads completely and utterly alone, your only impetus being selfish? Will you then defect to the ranks of the unmotivated, the lazy, and the uninspired? It seems so.

The italics in the essay represent the part of me, my body, that doesn't want to run. And boy did my body have a point here. If anything, these words feel more real to me than when I wrote them; they reach out from the past and mock me in the present. For years, I was telling myself that it wouldn't be harder to run when I was finally team-less, as I am today. It might even be easier! Alas, that was a lie. I am coming up on my first year of coach-free, team-less running, and it has definitely been harder. I've had to design my own workouts, listen to my own body, create my own mileage progressions, and a host of other things that a coach or a team used to do for or with me. To say it has been easy would be to lie.

So how, then does the Motivation I expressed in the story ("To discover my limits, to test them, and to burst through them (or “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”)—a process to be repeated ad infinitum.") hold up? Pretty well, I think. This idea, complemented by my own unique brand of masochism, does indeed form much of the reason I am still running. But here, I would take issue with my past self. For I don't think I tell the whole story.

My essay makes running seem like a transcendent, quasi-religious phenomenon. And yes, it sometimes is that for me (I think, for example, of how much I once perversely enjoyed an 18-mile run in -10 degree-temperatures). But to run just to achieve that often-elusive state is to set oneself up for disappointment. Or at least, it has set me up for disappointment when I have run for it alone. The major flaw of my own essay is to treat running solely as a means to unify with the abstract, the heavenly. But running is at least as important for me as a way to get in touch with the concrete, the earthly. Running makes me sweat, spit, and chafe. It makes me sore and tired. And it reminds me that accomplishing anything requires patience, discipline, and fortitude. As the quote below this poster, which has hung over my bed now in four different bedrooms, reads: "The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it."

Some of you may recognize this poster from the Snapchat in which I drew a UFO over the runner.

The runner's high is real. But running also helps keep me grounded in my day-to-day experiences. I have found this particularly true on the days of this past year or so when I haven't run. On those days, I just haven't felt like myself. Therefore, I hope--and believe--that I will still be running seriously 5 years from now, when maybe I shall revisit my own revisitation.

Running is too much a part of my being now to give up, which is at least as much part of my motivation now as what I wrote about 5 years ago. Yet my past self still impresses me, and I think my essay retains much capacity to inspire. Perhaps when I become famous, it will achieve a timelessness equal to that of Pirsig's novel. For in my own completely objective, unbiased opinion, one line already has:    


"Ouch…that’s Quality."

How 'Batman v. Superman' gets Batman wrong - guest post by Jared Van Dyke

Note: This is the first guest post on my blog. I am pleased to bestow that honor upon my good friend Jared Van Dyke, who is perhaps the foremost Batman scholar I am privileged to know. In fact, he has even portrayed Batman on stage, opposite me as the Joker - Jack.

What do you mean you don't like my portrayal of Batman?

[By Jared Van Dyke]:

I saw Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (BvS) the Friday after it came out. Instead of waiting to watch it with family, trying to convince recently-graduated friends to spend their hard-earned cash, or paying for my wife to take a 2 ½ hour nap during the critically-panned movie, I went by myself* to a late showing. I went in with low expectations, hoping to enjoy the spectacle and ideas behind the film even if the execution and plot were sub-par.

After coming out of the theater, I wasn’t initially sure how to react. My first impression was that it was not as bad as critical consensus led me to believe, and that it was similar in quality to other movies in recent memory that have not been similarly reviled. I enjoyed the cinematography and the spectacle. However, as time went on and I continued to process the movie, the shallowness of the ideas, combined with Snyder’s willingness to sacrifice the plot for cool visuals, led to a growing feeling of discontent and disappointment**. 

The impetus for these feelings was the portrayal of Batman. The more I thought on the characterization, the more my memory of the movie soured. My contention is not with Ben Affleck, the actor, but with the characterization of Batman (to whom I shall occasionally refer to in this post as ‘Batfleck’) he portrays - a Batman with some of the worst traits from his comic book history. What bewilders me is that some audience and critics have accepted Ben Affleck’s character of an older and ‘hardened’ Batman as one of the higher points the film. The core of this argument is that Batman was never meant to be a force for good; he is a merely a force for order. As a huge fan of the portrayal of Batman within the Dark Knight trilogy, I vehemently disagree with this viewpoint***.

The Bruce Wayne we see in BvS is not a hero. He begins the movie as an embittered anti-hero, one who has already rejected any ideals of justice he once stood for and concedes no standard of good higher than his own actions. This Batman gazed into Gotham’s abyss and was corrupted by the cruelty of what he found. After ~20 years of destroying criminals and suffering loss, he has adopted a lethal**** approach and has accepted the title of criminal himself.

Some people enjoy this portrayal of Batman, believing that his willingness to play by the rules of his enemies makes him more potent. In the film, however, Snyder clearly shows that the Batfleck is no more effective as an anti-hero than Batman has been in the past as a hero; while he is quick to kill criminals who get in his way, he admits that each time he cuts a criminal down, others rise up to take his place. He feels powerless to stop the decay of his city and admits that, on ideological grounds, he is just as criminal as those he fights. He himself admits Gotham is no better off than when he started, and that he views the execution of Superman as his only opportunity for an enduring legacy.

"Yes, I'm the cooler superhero. Come on, it's not even close."

Not content to remain an anti-hero, Batfleck soon becomes a full-fledged villain. Upon seeing the destruction that Superman (and Zod) inflict upon Metropolis during their battle at the end of Man of Steel (restaged from a ground-level perspective at the beginning of BvS), he formulates a plan to destroy Superman out of a belief that no one can continue to do the right thing in a broken world. In response to protests from Alfred, his butler, crime-fighting partner, and surrogate father, that Superman is not their enemy (and, in fact, has demonstrated absolutely no ill intent thus far), he justifies his murderous plot by agreeing with Alfred, and saying that, even though Alfred is correct, Superman’s capacity for free will justifies the use of lethal force to prevent evil from ever occurring.  As Batfleck states, “if there is even a one percent chance” that Superman could turn bad - something he has provided no evidence of doing - then Batfleck will “treat it as an absolute certainty.”

This justification is illogical and insane. All men have a capacity for evil; many men are in powerful positions. He could therefore apply the same rationale as justification for him to murder politicians, businessmen, or even himself. The fact that this sociopathic portrayal has been heralded as a bright spot in this dour film is especially frustrating, as other writers have done a far better job of using the character of Batman to explore how a man can live and fight for justice in a world that is only a push away from madness.

In contrast to Batfleck, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy presents a nuanced examination of actions and morals. The central question of The Dark Knight is: What will become of a man who stands up against absolute evil? The story provides examples of two different paths. The first is the path of a man who compromises - Harvey Dent, Gotham's White Knight, who decides that he will become whatever he needs to be to fight evil. The second is the man who will not compromise - Bruce Wayne, Gotham’s Dark Knight, who dwells in the shadows but has a strict rule that prevents him from joining them.  For the uninitiated, his rule is simple - he refuses kill his foes. As seen in Batman Begins, he will not cross that line to executive vengeance and become an executioner; instead, he delivers criminals into the into the hands of civil society, which then puts the responsibility on Gotham’s leaders to take notice and address the evil within their city.

As The Dark Knight unfolds, we see the consequences of Bruce’s and Harvey’s actions and ideologies. After initial heroics and defending the idea of suspending rules to defeat evil, Harvey comes face-to-face with the Joker and succumbs to the temptation of evil. He is convinced that it cannot be stopped, and that there is no good in the world. Ultimately, Harvey’s willingness to compromise and become what he is fighting nearly lead to the Joker’s victory. In his final showdown, Harvey screams out to Batman that “You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time...but you were wrong! The world is cruel. And the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased, unprejudiced, fair.” Snyder’s Batman reveals just how far he as fallen when he mirrors this sentiment by saying “My parents taught me a different lesson... lying on this street... shaking in deep shock... dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to.” Both Nolan’s Two-Face and Batfleck are overcome by the brokenness of the world, and aim to force it to make sense by applying their own version of lethal justice.

Pictured: The Batman we need (from The Dark Knight)

Nolan’s Batman stands in contrast to Batfleck. After working closely with the police department to defeat the mob and save his city, he is faced with the senseless chaos brought about by the Joker, which eventually leads to the betrayal of many members of the department who had helped him in the first place. In a moment of doubt, he confides to Alfred that he doesn’t know what he can do against an evil that only desires to watch the world burn.  Alfred urges him to endure, and to make the right choice.  He shows the strength of his endurance in his final confrontation with the Joker.  Even after suffering the loss of the one he loved at the Joker’s hand, he does not kill the him, instead telling him that people can be better than the Joker - that they can make the choice to believe in good, and to do the right thing even at severe personal cost.

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We can clearly see the stark contrast between Syder’s and Nolan’s Batmen. Batfleck aims to kill an innocent superhero to ‘save the world.’ But Nolan’s Batman, fighting for his idea of good, refuses to execute personal judgment on a villain.

So why must I set the record straight? Why should the world care about Batman? I believe there is a clear answer: The characterization of Batman matters because he shows how good can respond to evil in a broken world. In his better writing, Batman fights for order against chaos and darkness by holding himself to a higher standard. He has rules that separate him from the evil he fights. Thus, he remains above it as an incorruptible force for good. The world doesn’t need more cynics believing that the only way to live in a world without rules is without rules. It needs decent men in indecent times. Men who will not allow acts of evil to push them into the darkness themselves. If a dark Batman does not stand for anything higher than himself, he is not worth investing in as a hero.

And if a heroic Batman is not going to be a part of the DC Cinematic Universe, then I am not interested.

 ---

*Coincidentally, I had done the same thing for the previous Batman film - The Dark Knight Rises - but only because I was in Argentina for a month after it arrived in theaters and decided I had to watch it as soon as possible upon arriving home.

** James Cameron’s Avatar is a similar experience - high on visuals, short on plot and substance.

***I realize that this is not a new argument against Zack Snyder’s DC cinematic universe. After Man of Steel came out (which, admittedly, I enjoyed at the time), many long-time Superman fans were appalled by the creative liberties that were taken with their character. While I chalked it up to mere fanboy backlash at the time, watching BvS has caused me to go back and re-consider the character destruction that occurred in that movie - and I see now that fans had good reason for their negative reaction to the character that Superman was turned into within the DC Movie Universe, and that it should have been a warning sign about what he would do with the rest of the characters he was given to play with.

****And despite what Synder may say, it is a callously lethal approach - crushing people in the Batmobile and stabbing a being through the heart are calculated, deadly, and avoidable.

What I predicted about "The Force Awakens" exactly a year ago

The trailer that first gave the world this image.

 Though I have already written quite a lot about last year's Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, recently out on Blu-Ray (and a little bit more about why I should be the next Han Solo), and though I concluded the last thing I wrote about the movie itself by saying that I (likely) wouldn't write any more about the movie...well, permit me one last post. For Facebook's "On This Day" feature--which I both find fascinating as an obsessive retrospectator, and trivial as a general hater of Facebook--resurrected what I had to say about this trailer that came out exactly a year ago today:


It's pretty weird to watch that trailer after you've already seen the movie (and weird for me to think about the fact that I didn't know where I would be typing these words when the trailer came out last April). Some of its scenes don't even appear in the final product, but all of its teases and hints are now fully revealed. But that's not why I am interested in revisiting it. As an obsessive retrospectator, I am always interested in seeing whether I was right about things like this. So here's what I had to say about the trailer when it first came out, identified as "Past Jack" (you can find what I am quoting from here), followed by my analyses by my current self, identified as "Present Jack":

1) Past Jack: The idea of ships falling out of the sky and being ruins on planets is awesome, and visually fascinating. It could also be a metaphor, if unconscious, of this trilogy's relationship to the past

Present Jack: The Force Awakens did indeed make excellent use of literal objects from the past of Star Wars, and did not shy away from using these as symbols if its relationship to the past movies. Think of the crashed ships on Jakku, Darth Vader's helmet (kept by a Vader-obsessed Kylo Ren), Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, and the Millennium Falcon itself (which was really the first "character" of the original trilogy we saw in the movie). So I was right about this, although I could have been more right; early drafts of the screenplay had characters exploring the underwater wreckage of the Second Death Star, and Maz Kanata going around the galaxy hunting Force-sensitive relics.

2) Past Jack: Why does Luke say that his father "HAS that power"--i.e., in the present tense? Is he still around? If so, I hope it's not Hayden Christensen's force ghost
 Present Jack: This turned out to be some artful misdirection on the part of whoever put the trailer together. Not only was it merely a replaying of lines Luke Skywalker spoke in an (absolutely beautiful) scene of Return of the Jedi, but Luke also does not even appear in the movie until the last minute or so, Darth Vader is definitely dead, and Hayden Christensen is nowhere in sight (for now).

3) Past Jack: The settings appear familiar in places. Desert planet, Ice planet, etc. The cast and crew have been very coy about the settings, saying things like "don't think Tatooine is the only desert planet" or "don't think Hoth is thPe only ice planet," etc. But why not just make them there?
Present Jack: The Force Awakens ended up not revisiting a single location from any prior movie (unless you count the Millennium Falcon), though the planets/places it did visit were very similar to past locations (Jakku-Tatooine, Takadona-Yavin IV, Starkiller Base-Hoth). I wish it did go back to old places, though, and I hope it does in the next two movies. I also hope we see planets that are both new and not overly similar to somewhere we've already been.

4) Past Jack: When robot-hand guy (Luke, presumably) lays his hand on R2-D2, he seems to be in some kind of volcanic environment. When New Villain uses the Force, he also seems to be in some kind of volcanic environment. Is this happening in the same place? And is the place...Mustafar? For all the prequel's failings, the idea of a hellish fire-world is visually appealing, at the very least. Could be an interesting callback.
Present Jack: Alas, The Force Awakens did not have any scenes on Mustafar, though I think that would have been pretty cool (maybe it will happen later? I could see Vader-obsessed Kylo Ren tracing Anakin's history back to that place for some reason...). Also, the scene of Luke laying a hand on R2-D2 turned out to be only a brief scene in Rey's Force vision.

5) Past Jack: Who is the chrome-plated Stormtrooper? Could this be the "Inquisitor" we keep hearing rumors about?
6) Present Jack: No, it was Captain Phasma, who didn't actually appear all that much in the movie despite looking really cool.

7) Past Jack: Han--i.e., Harrison Ford--actually looks HAPPY in the trailer. This is important. In "Crystal Skull" and in all the movies he's done lately, Harrison Ford has basically played a grumpy old man. I know it might be a bit much to extrapolate from just one scene and line of dialogue, but this is a good sign. Of course you'd be happy, ironic, and prone to one-liners if you are HAN SOLO, even if you're a 65+year-old Han Solo
8) Present Jack: I was totally right about this. Harrison Ford's reprising Han Solo was one of the best parts of the movie. He made an old Han Solo completely believable. He was old, sure, but still the same Han we knew and loved. A great final act for a great character.

9) Past Jack: Why does Han say that he and Chewie are "home"? Are they back in the Millennium Falcon? Had they lost it? Or are we going to learn about their backstory? 
10) Present Jack: I was right about this, though if I had studied up more on Star Wars before I saw this trailer, I would have recognized the faithfully-reproduced background of the Millennium Falcon from the previous films as what Han and Chewie were standing in front of at the end of the trailer. And they did lose the Falcon. We didn't learn much more about their back story, but I'm sure we'll get that in the new Han Solo movie, which I don't believe was announced until a few months later, on my 22nd birthday (July 7, 2015).  

10) Past Jack: On the whole, visually, everything looks pretty good so far. Abrams can be an overly-kinetic filmmaker, but this trailer, at least, shows a nice handling of action shots as well as a willingness to let the camera linger that has been almost entirely lost in mainstream modern cinema but which the original trilogy used in spades. I continue to maintain that, to the extent the Star Trek movies weren't perfect, it's because JJ was never really a Star Trek fan or someone familiar with that universe, but he is most definitely a Star Wars fan and familiar with that universe (just look at the way he turned the 2009 Star Trek movie into a "A New Hope"). So, in short, I don't think those movies can be used against him.
Present Jack: I stand by everything I said here. The Force Awakens definitely felt like a Star Wars movie, which was my and probably everyone's biggest concern going into it. Abrams definitely rose to the occasion, adopting some old-school filmmaking techniques and shedding some of his worse instincts as a filmmaker, and giving us some new iconic moments in the process. 

I mean, come on. This was beautiful. 

11) Past Jack: In sum, I remain cautiously optimistic about this movie. I think that the choices in cast, crew, direction, special-effects, story (goodbye, George Lucas!) have all been great so far. Will it achieve the difficult task of capturing that ineffable Star Wars movie feeling? I don't know. I guess we'll see in 8 months. I will use this post as a benchmark for it. Perhaps I'll send it to myself via Futureme.org in an email that I'll get the day the movie comes out.
Present Jack: The Force Awakens more than vindicated my cautious optimism, and definitely captured that "ineffable Star Wars movie feeling." I did not, however, send myself this post as an email to myself via Futureme.org that I got the day The Force Awakens came out, but I did decide to use this blog--which didn't exist last April--to say something about it anyway, and to use my past comments as a benchmark. So I was half-right, basically.

All in all, not a bad prediction record, I'd say. I might do something similar for the next round of trailers for Star Wars Episode VIII: The Gods of the Past*.

*My prediction, based on Snoke's mythic stature, Luke's presence at the "First Jedi Temple," and Kylo Ren's lightsaber based on ancient design, is that the next two Star Wars movies are going to delve deeply into an area of mythology only hinted at so far: the far-distant past of the galaxy, particularly the ancient origins of the Jedi-Sith feud. Hence, The Gods of the Past.