2016 was the year of the Great Lakes (and the Midwest), for me and the country

They defined 2016.

2016 has been quite the year. Political drama. Celebrity deaths. General misfortune. Some of this is real. Some of it, though, I think is the gratuitous ascribing of agency to an arbitrary temporal concept. 2016 has not killed anyone. But, in our attempt to make sense of the world, we often assign agency or meaning to things that fundamentally lack it. Poet (and insurance salesman) Wallace Stevens once wrote of this tendency in his poem, "Anecdote of a Bell Jar":

 I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air. 
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

The narrator of this poem simply places a jar on a hill somewhere in the arbitrary, unforgiving wilderness; in so doing, he forces uncaring nature to define itself in terms of the jar. It is an arbitrary act, this imposing of meaning, but it is an imposition of meaning nonetheless, however small.

In that spirit, I would like to define 2016 differently from how many seem to be understanding it. For me and for the country, 2016 was the year, not, pace Stevens, of jars, or Tennessee,  but of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are a fascinating and beautiful geographical feature of North America; the product of glacial movements eons ago, they are individually and collectively among the largest sources of fresh water in the world. In the United States, they more or less define the region known as the Midwest, from which I, as an Ohioan, hail. The Midwest is a strange place. I think its best description comes from the beginning of essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan's biographical exposition of Guns 'n' Roses frontman Axl Rose (who is from Indiana):

...What's the most nowhere part of America? The Midwest, right? But once you get into the Midwest, you find that each of the different nowherenesses has laid claim to its own somewhereness. There are the lonely plains in Iowa. In Michigan there is a Gordon Lightfoot song. And Ohio has its very blandness and averageness, faintly comical, to cling to. All of them have something. And now I invite you to close your eyes, and when I say "Indiana"…blue screen, no?...

The Midwest is an oft-mocked place (Rust Belt, Flyover country, etc.): It is bland, benighted, boring, and other words that don't even start with "b." While I'll always love it here (I type from southwestern Ohio), some of this mockery is deserved. But this year, my first full year as an independent adult, the Midwest and the Great Lakes punched way above their weight, in both my life and in the life of our country.

When did this begin? You could point to a couple of markers. The inordinate importance of Iowa (not Great Lakes, but still definitely Midwestern) in our presidential election system, though a regular feature for the past 30-40 years, assumed a special significance this year when it gave incredibly narrow victories to Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Hillary Clinton. The result of the Iowa caucuses this year virtually guaranteed the lengthy presidential primaries on both sides that we eventually got.

John Kasich's desire to eat may also have had something to do with it. 

The Midwest's political influence further lengthened these primaries when Ohio went for John Kasich, its governor and Wisconsin gave a victory to Ted Cruz, delaying Donald Trump's eventual securing of the Republican presidential nomination, and when Michigan gave a surprise victory to Bernie Sanders, delaying Clinton's eventual victory as well. Trump and Clinton would eventually win their parties' respective nominations; for Trump, victories in the Great Lakes states of New York and, finally, thoroughly Midwestern Indiana sealed the (art of ) the deal. But this, too, was a sign of the Great Lakes' influence. Though Hillary rose to political power from Arkansas, she was born in Illinois, and represented Erie-and-Ontario-bordering New York in the Senate, the same state where Trump spent his whole life before, well...we'll see. But this was not the last time the Great Lakes region would influence America's political course this year.

The Great Lakes region flexed its muscles culturally as well. I would say that the Great Lakes' impact began with the shocking death in April of noted musician (and Minnesotan) Prince. Then, in May, an employee at the Cincinnati Zoo shot and killed a male silverback gorilla named Harambe when a child fell into the gorilla's enclosure, causing a momentary flurry of parenting and gorilla experts across the country. In June, in the world of sports, the Cleveland Cavaliers made the Golden State Warriors blow a 3-1 lead, broke Cleveland's 52-year sports championship drought, and challenged strongly-held stereotypes of Cleveland as the "mistake on the lake" by winning the NBA championships. And they did it all without catching the Cuyohoga River on fire.

Because that is a thing that has actually happened multiple times in the past.

For me, the year of the Great Lakes began, in a sense, all the way at the beginning of the year, when I spent the first few days of 2016 at my Midwestern home before returning to Washington. But it really began when I returned to my native Cincinnati soil in mid-July, one week after the one-year anniversary of the beginning of my life in D.C. (a week that includes my first day in the city, my first day of work, and my 22nd birthday). But I was not there to visit. The day after I returned, I made the long drive up I-71 to Cleveland, where my work had drawn me to attend the Republican National Convention, July 18-21. It was by far the craziest political experience I have ever had. And it was also up there for my life overall. That week, when I wasn't at the convention, I was sleeping (though not that much) or running in the vicinity of the residence of a Cleveland-residing college friend of mine.

At the end of the RNC.

The whole convention was the political equivalent of the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from A New Hope. Reporters and media personalities rubbed elbows with state and local party officials and hacks. Cameras were everywhere; protesters were confined to a relatively small portion of the city. The actual delegates, those who voted to give the Republican Party presidential nomination to Donald Trump, were themselves a motley crew; the Texas delegation, for example, had a uniform: blue jeans, a Texas flag shirt, and a ten-gallon hat. (More photos to come.)

On the last night of the convention, I watched as RNC Chair and Great Lakes-bordering Wisconsn native Reince Priebus orchestrated the bestowing upon Donald Trump of the Republican presidential nomination. The convention ended with the gavel-hammering of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (also a Wisconsin native). For reasons I'll never fully understand, Trump chose "You Can't Always Get What You Want" as the final song of the RNC; it played as I left Quicken Loans arena.

The next day, after a beautiful run in North Chagrin Nature Center, I decided to cross some items off of my Cleveland bucket list while I was in town. Before I did that, however, I had to recover the wallet I had somehow lost (and, miraculously, returned home without). I drove into the city with gas purchased from the massive amounts of change found in my car, then, in a wonderful display of Midwestern hospitality, found my wallet exactly where I had left it. From there, I headed to Cleveland's famous Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

As a rock fan, I had wanted to visit the place for a long time. It didn't disappoint. Again, the pictures I have provided do not do it justice; see here for the rest. It would be hard to describe the collection of rock history and memorabilia with anything close to brevity. So I'll just recommend that you visit yourself (especially now that Electric Light Orchestra, my favorite band, has been inducted into its Hall of Fame, no doubt due to my advocacy). And I'll describe it this way: If Donald Trump actually does usher in the apocalypse, the Mad Max-style civilization that crops up in his wake could create a weird sort of religion from all the 'relics' of rock 'n' roll history contained in Cleveland's Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. (More photos to come.)

While I was in Cleveland, I wanted to cross one more item off of my life's bucket list. So I drove into Ohio City to explore the summer-vacant campus of Cleveland St. Ignatius High School. St. Ignatius is the brother school of Cincinnati St.Xavier, my alma mater: they are both all-male, Jesuit, have around 1600 students, and are always consistently competitive in sports, both in the state and with each other. In 2009. St. Ignatius bested St. Xavier in the state cross country meet, earning first place to my team's second. Naturally, I had to visit for my revenge.

My revenge.

Yet as I wandered around its campus--the word is appropriate; St. I's resembles a college campus far more than does X, with multiple buildings organized around a central quad, rather than X's single building--I felt not seething bitterness but curiosity and wistfulness. Visiting its classrooms, cafeteria, track, and other parts of its campus pointed me toward some similarities between X and I's. Most notably, I found that I's also uses the "JUG" (Justice Under God) as a disciplinary tool akin to a detention. This and other things I saw gave me a sort of empathy, heightened understanding, and appreciation for the life that my brothers at St.I's lived. I often wonder how my own life would have gone in different circumstances. While I am content with my life's course up to this point, my visit to I's suggested that I could have had a decent one having gone to high school there as well. And my visit to Cleveland as a whole forced me to abandon--or, at least, to qualify--many of the anti-Cleveland stereotypes I had accrued from my Cincinnati upbringing. (I still maintain that Cincinnati has better views because of its hills.)

Cincinnati doesn't have a Great Lake, though. 

Had I so desired, I could have continued my exploration of the Great Lakes' intersection with the political world the week after the RNC. That week, Hillary Clinton would accept her party's presidential nomination in Philadelphia, in a state (Pennsylvania) that also borders Great Lakes. Instead, on the same day I visited the Rock Hall and St. Ignatius, I took one of those long evening highway drives through the Midwest, the sort of journey impossible in my current D.C. existence (I don't have a car). Before my drive up for the RNC, I had not taken any such journey since the last time I drove from Hillsdale College (my other alma mater, in southeastern Michigan; it too will have a place in this story) to Cincinnati. It was a stress-free, blissful, relaxed, thoughtful, music-laden drive through mostly rural Ohio along I-71. I stopped once along the way at one of those massive trucker rest-stops of which my experience traveling for track meets in college made me so fond. I enjoyed this trip in ways I still am having difficulty explaining, so I'll simply submit its casual sublimity to the mysteries of this world.

Next came a few relaxed days in my hometown, running and reconnecting with friends old and new, a welcome rest (as was my drive) from the acute dose of politics I had received the week before. But this was a mere prelude to my real vacation: a family trip to South Haven, Michigan, a lovely small town on the West side of the state, right on beautiful Lake Michigan. I didn't do much while I was there other than spend time with my family, run, and relax at the beach--and that's exactly what I wanted. (More pictures to come.)

Sunset on Lake Michigan

There was one exception to this leisure: when I made a small journey to visit my friend (and contributor to this blog) Jared Van Dyke to fulfill a promise. Together, we restaged the interrogation scene from The Dark Knight, a story I have already told on this blog.

The influence of the Great Lakes on my life, and on that of the nation as a whole, manifested more sporadically over the next few months. In the Olympics, young underdog Ohioan Clayton Murphy snagged a bronze in the 800 meters. In late summer/early fall, the Internet resurrected Harambe, turning him into one of the biggest memes of all time (though he was probably the anti-Christ). In September, I returned to Hillsdale, my Michigan alma mater, to engage in yet more reflections on my post-collegiate life. In the wider world, several Great Lakes and Midwestern states, most notably Ohio, Iowa, and Pennsylvania (or so it seemed) became this election cycle's most vicious battlegrounds. In October, Minnesotan Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature. On November 2nd, just before the election, the Chicago Cubs (Lake Michigan) forced the Cleveland Indians (Lake Erie) to blow a 3-1 lead in the World Series, ending a 108-year championship drought for the former team. And it was only a year after Back to the Future Part II predicted it would happen. The improbability of this outcome suggested that there was no way the longshot candidacy of Donald Trump could succeed; the universe would surely only allow one of these events.

Or not. I deal in politics for a living, and so, on Election Day, after I left work, I went off the grid. It was not until 8:30 am the next morning that I learned the impossible had happened: Donald Trump had won. And, more relevant for this post, he won it from the Great Lakes. Not only did he win the Midwestern states likely to vote for him (mainly Iowa and Ohio); he also secured victories in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (and nearly Minnesota). In an article I wrote but never published before the election, I predicted that, at some point in our political future, "Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin may become swing or even red states." I had no idea, however, that it would happen so soon. No one else did either though, so I feel a bit less embarrassed.

In this instance, it is useful to recall John Jeremiah Sullivan's description of Michigan: it "has a Gordon Lightfoot song." That song, of course, is "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," an account of the 1975 sinking of a cargo vessel in Lake Superior. Having spent a lot of time in Michigan in my life so far, I can say that Sullivan's remark holds true. Michiganders have adopted the song as a sort of state anthem. It has also been parodied by the political satirical musical group known as the Capitol Steps, who wrote a little ditty after Minnesota native Walter Fritz Mondale's loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election called "The Wreck of the Walter Fritz Mondale." You can listen to it here. In this spirit, I wrote, sang, and recorded my own musical account of the 2016 election, using the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." I call it "The Wreck of the Hillary Clinton." You can listen to it here, or click below for the embed.


"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" may be the anthem of the entire state of Michigan, but it is the state's Upper Peninsula that has truly adopted it. Three years ago, I was lucky enough to be a cross-country runner in the Great Lakes Inter-Athletic Conference when it was Upper Peninsula-residing Michigan Technological University's turn to host the conference meet. When I learned what that meant, I was a bit mad and a bit mystified: Mad, because it would take up my entire fall break, which I usually spent relaxing at home; mystified, because, apart from the few friends I had at Hillsdale who hailed from da UP, and what they and others had told me about it, I knew nothing about the Superior State.

Yet our team Houghton trip became my favorite college running memory. I’ll never forget running at dawn in the shadow of the Mackinac Bridge at the beginning of the second leg of our journey; counting the number of pasty shops we saw between Mackinac City and Houghton (13); and not just surviving but thriving on the toughest, most beautiful cross-country course I’ve ever raced. The only bad thing about the trip was that it had to end.

Because I loved Houghton and the UP so much, I spent the past three years plotting to return, though I had no idea how. But when I learned that a good friend was a track coach at Michigan Tech, I, after some hesitation, decided to take full advantage of my flexible young-adult status and booked the flights. My timing ended up fortuitous, for three reasons: 1) It was just after the election, which I had spent the entirety of my job in D.C. up to that point closely following, and from which I desperately needed a break; 2) my first day in the UP happened to be the 41st anniversary of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, an incredible coincidence I didn’t even plan; 3) the weekend after I left was Houghton’s first snowfall of the season (not that I dislike winter; I just wasn’t ready for it). I knew I was in for a treat when I left the busy airports of D.C. and Detroit, with thousands of people, hundreds of gates, and televisions blasting CNN everywhere, for Marquette's two-gated, sparsely-populated airport with a single television that was playing Blue Bloods (and the remote sitting on a table by the TV for anyone to change the channel).

But those weren’t the only reasons my trip to Houghton was great. I enjoyed every moment of it. It was even more beautiful than I remembered, as was the surrounding area (Mt. Ripley, McClain State Park, Dollar Bay, etc.). I didn’t see nearly as much of Michigan Tech itself the last time I was there as I did this time around; I’m glad I did. And it was a borderline religious experience for me to run not once but twice more on the hallowed ground of the cross-country (ski) course, where the scenic beauty competed with my overwhelming nostalgia and the exhaustion from climbing its hills for emotional predominance. Finally, I closed out the weekend by watching Escanaba in da Moonlight, a tale of life in the Upper Peninsula directed by, written by, and starring Michigan native Jeff Daniels, while also listening only to Lightfoot's anthem for every drive I took in the UP (I went through it at least 50 times). And in my final moments in the UP, just before I returned to the hilariously and refreshingly modest airport that would return me to civilization, my ride and I saw a bald eagle in person, a first for both of us. It was a fitting end to my post-election trip to a remote redoubt of real America. As with my first trip to the UP, the only bad thing about my second was that it had to end. Again, the pictures I include do not convey the majesty of the experience. More to come.

Clockwise, from left: The Michigan Tech cross-country course, the view from Mt. Ripley, the view of Houghton from Hancock, sunset at Lake Superior.

I closed the year where it had began: in my southwestern Ohio roots. First, I came back for Thanksgiving to compete in Cincinnati's Thanksgiving Day race. After a few months of doubt about running's place in my future, it was the promise of this race that gave me purpose once more. I had been training for it since June, and was feeling fit, fresh, and ready to race when, mere days before the race, I fractured my left pinky toe in a freak absurd accident. At first, I could not believe that it had actually happened, and was keeping me from walking, much less running. Confident that I could recover in time for the race on Thanksgiving Day, however, I did everything I could to accelerate the healing while also aggressively cross-training. I ended up placing 2nd, which was about as good as I could have hoped for. And then, over the next few days, I enjoyed the pleasure of reconnecting with family and friends. And, of course, eating a bunch of food.

In the wider world, the Midwest flexed its cultural muscles once more the day after Thanksgiving, when Michigan and Ohio State played the most contested football game of the year, facing each other ranked #3 and #2, respectively (part of a wider pattern of the Big Ten, the football conference of the Great Lakes, putting to rest doubts about it versus the SEC, at least for now). Ohio State secured a victory so narrow that this thrilling, highly-rated game (one of the best football games, NFL or NCAA, of the year) ensured this rivalry is back to its historically contested standards.

For which you can thank this crazy man. 

I closed this first holiday journey back to real America by witnessing another bald eagle, this time, in Loveland, at the end of a run with a friend. Before my Upper Peninsula sighting, I had never seen one in person; this made two in the same two-week span. The second sighting was my first-ever sighting in Loveland. Both the friend I was with and I are Pokémon fans, so we instantly analogized it to Ash's Ho-oh sighting at the end of the very first episode.

One journey through the holiday time accelerator (and multiple Christmas parties) later, I found myself back in my hometown, to ring in the holidays with family and to reconnect with friends (mostly runners, it seems) once more. It is here that I composed this recounting of my year. I am near the end of my holiday recuperation in my native soil. While here for this rest, my life has been as stress-free as it has been filled with family, friends, places, and memories dear to me. I know my time here is near an end (for now, anyway), as I no longer live or work here. But my heart will always be here.

My backyard at sunset, an even more beautiful place than I ever remember.

As for the Midwest and 2016 generally, I think the former proved during the latter that it matters a lot more than we often think. 2016 may have been a year of celebrity deaths, though, I'm warning you, as I did at the very beginning of the year, that these deaths will only come at an accelerating rate going forward, so expect 2017 to be even worse in this regard. As Wallace Stevens wrote, we'll all try to impose meaning on this seemingly chaotic year in our own ways. You could say that I am cherry-picking to write this post. Maybe so. But in sports, entertainment, and politics, and in my own life, I submit that 2016 was the year of the Great Lakes.

Long may those glacial creations reign.

'Westworld' is an ambitious misfire

I'll readily admit that this looks pretty cool. 

I should have loved Westworld. 

Just look at some of the people behind the camera. Jonathan Nolan, brother and frequent collaborator of esteemed director Christopher Nolan (they co-wrote Memento, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, and Interstellar). J.J. Abrams, creator of LOST and Fringe, two of my favorite TV shows, director of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (which is good, darn it!), and producer of 10 Cloverfield Lane, one of my favorite movies of 2016.

And then, in front of the camera, there is what Hollywood calls an "ensemble cast"*: James Marsden, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, and many others. And headlining this cast are two of the best actors of the past 40 years: Ed Harris (Snowpiercer, The Truman Show) and, of course, the great Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs, The Lion in Winter, and so much more).

These creative personnel also have what seems like a great canvas on which to paint. Westworld, loosely based on Michael Crichton's 1973 film of the same name (whose basic "theme park disaster scenario" Crichton later repurposed into Jurassic Park), is both the name of the show (obviously) and the name of the massive, technologically-advanced, Old West-style complex that serves as the show's primary setting (along with the headquarters outside of the park that manages it). It is a sprawling, fully-realized world, an amusement park where guests pay top dollar to do whatever they want: help the sheriff, become a bandit, rescue the girl, mess around with prostitutes, explore the vast landscape, and whatever else their hearts desire.

Because nothing ever goes wrong at massively complex amusement parks that use technology we don't yet fully understand.

Oh, and one more thing: Everyone in the park, except for the guests, is an android, barely distinguishable from a human being. And some of the androids seem to be on the verge of achieving self-awareness.

So yes, this all sounds great and ambitious: Talented producers, writers, and actors, working with some of the heady sci-fi themes--the nature of consciousness and identity, artificial intelligence, self-awareness, et al.--that I have loved thinking about since I first encountered them in the works of Isaac Asimov (and Harlan Ellison) many years ago. The Old West setting would supply an opportunity for compelling and unique action and drama. And with a Nolan brother and J.J. Abrams around to keep things interesting, surely the story would take many exciting and unexpected turns.

So you would think.

He's thinking about whether he likes Westworld.

Some of Westworld does live up to the promise of its premise, to be sure. Many of the actors face the novel challenge of having to depict a gradual emergence of self-awareness, a difficult journey from mere automaton to thinking being. Most of those entrusted with this difficult task do a wonderful job with it. Harris and Hopkins are impressive as always. The show fulfills its HBO quota of sex, nudity, and violence. And some of the narrative's twists and turns did surprise me, and others that didn't surprise me at least impressed me with their execution. It indulges in some heady themes and ideas, plays host to some great characters, and, in the end, does achieve some rewarding narrative payoff.

None of this, however, allows Westworld to transcend its innate flaws. Many of the characters are uninteresting or unconvincing, doing things inexplicably, or simply because the plot demands it of them. And throughout this whole ten-episode season, the things that every character does, in and out of the park, take so long. I'm a patient man, but I don't think I've ever watched a show that took such a long time to make interesting things happen, to provide payoff for its incredibly-carefully constructed narrative threads. The whole thing could have been half as long, and none of it would have suffered or felt rushed.

This is a more technical criticism, though. At a philosophical level, I could not get on board with what I think amounts to a prerequisite of the show: You have to hate human beings. The general thrust of the first season is, slowly yet surely, to take the side of the consciousness-emerging robots. It's possible that much of the show's slowness in narrative and pacing reflects the steady assumption of consciousness by its robot main characters; it's certain that at least some of the show's weakness in narrative construction comes from the sacrifices to the plot that must be made to bring these robots to that requisite consciousness**.

Because giving machines artificial intelligence always ends well.

But at no point did I empathize with or care for the robots in the show***, even when most of the humans we see are the easily-tempted or damaged visitors to the park, or the managers of the park who are trained to see the robots as inhuman (which they are!). Maybe that's just a personal bias; maybe the human race as depicted in the show deserves the comeuppance of being avenged by its subjugated creations, and the show is trying to say something from that. Yet even though Westworld stacks the deck against the human race, I just couldn't take the side of the machines.

The combined effect of Westworld's methodical approach in plotting and the alienating intent of its philosophical outlook is to create a show that the AV Club's Zack Handlen described as "clinical bordering on sterile."  It's possible that Season 2 (not arriving until 2018) will improve upon what has come before it, now that the foundation has been built. There are some interesting directions in which Westworld could go next: Explore the fallen/corrupt/exhausted nature of the near-future world that drives guests to seek solace in Westworld; hone in on the corporate intrigue and ultimate purpose of the park (it's not just for recreation); ponder the implications and the politics of self-aware A.I. It could do all of these things, or none of them. But all the world's ambition can't make up for flawed execution. So unless I hear that the show has fundamentally improved its narrative style or philosophical approach, I don't expect to visit Westworld again.

*I've always been amused by the application of the term "ensemble cast." Do casts that aren't sufficiently pedigreed to earn that label get offended when they don't?
**There are two minor characters, in fact, who basically betrayed the human race for no other reason than that the plot demanded it.
***One exception to this: The repetitive nature of the robots' jobs. It reminded me of this video in which a human programs two devices to talk to each other and trap one another in an infinite loop. If the machines do rebel, it will be Exhibit A in Robot Hague when humanity is on trial for its crimes against robotkind. But, if you think about it, many, if not most, if not all of the tasks we make machines do are repetitive in nature. Thank God they're not self-aware enough to realize this (yet).

The next 'Star Wars' spin-off should be a Darth Vader horror movie

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR ROGUE ONE FOLLOW

"You know I'm the best thing about these movies anyway."

If you've seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (as I have; read my [positive] review here), then you know that probably the best part of the movie comes at almost the very end. The part I have in mind is when freaking Darth Vader shows up and massacres a bunch of rebel scum who first try vainly to fight him and then try desperately to escape him. His scenes are framed to make him seem like a horror movie monster, and he moves through the rebels like a Terminator. This scene lasts for no more than five minutes, but it felt, on my first watch-through, like it was only 30 seconds, such did it shock me.

This scene may have surprised some people, even though Vader does have a brief scene earlier in the movie before showing up the second time. And while this second scene's quality did stun me, I wasn't surprised that it happened: I predicted it! Here's what I wrote four days before the movie came out: 

Here's how I imagine the movie going, in rough form: Along the way, a few of the motley crew die in their efforts to get the Death Star plans. But, near the end, it seems that they are about to succeed. All is merry. Then, out of nowhere, Darth Vader shows up. Since, to my knowledge, none of the characters in this movie have any kind of Force powers, Vader will be treated on-screen, essentially, as a horror villain. He will pop out of dark corners, float down from high places, block blasters with his hands, Force choke, dismember, decapitate, and utterly ruin whomever remains of Rogue Squadron by the end of the movie, and there's nothing anyone there can do about it. This, remember, is Darth Vader at his prime, when he was choking pilots and boarding enemy ships effortlessly. The main female protagonist in the movie, in classic final girl style, will barely escape Vader's grasp; as she flies away, she sees Vader staring at her, menacingly. That would be an incredible final act.

With some minor alterations, this is almost exactly what happened. But I'm not just mentioning this to pat myself on the back (though I am doing that, too). The consensus emerging about Rogue One is that it's a good movie, but the Vader sequence is by far the best part. I agree with this, with one exception: I think it was too short.

"It needed more me." 

Maybe it would have been too much to center the entire final act around Vader hunting people down. That would have made what was basically a war movie more like a horror movie. But, in the spirit of my prior free advice for the creative personnel behind Star Wars--past examples including casting me as Han Solo, how to make the Han Solo movie good, and how Episode VIII could (and why it should) make Rey turn to the Dark Side--allow me to suggest an idea: There should be a Star Wars spin-off horror movie, and Darth Vader should be the monster.

The end of Rogue One proved Darth Vader's potential as a horror villain. He is dark, unstoppable, and generates atmospheric dread simply by his presence. Framed by darkness, he can hide, and then burst out surprisingly. He can also float, hurt or kill you from a distance, stop your bullets, and brutally maim you--and there's nothing you can do about it. But you'd still have to build a plot around this potential to make it interesting for an entire movie.

So what's the best way to do that? The way I see it, these are the two best options. Both of them involve Jedi. The first would have Darth Vader learn that a group of Jedi somehow survived Order 66--a purge that killed all the Jedi, depicted in Revenge of the Sith--by fleeing to a remote planet. Vader then travels to that planet and hunts down these very overmatched Jedi (perhaps they are younger, padawans, or even younglings). The creative personnel behind this film would intentionally chose/design it to heighten the atmospheric dread as much as possible; make it dark, swampy (Dagobah?), full of ruins, shadows, etc. Maximize the horror potential of Vader's silent breathing, coming from somewhere, but with none of the victims-to-be able to see him until too late. Tensions would rise within the group, horror movie cliches would be demonstrated and subverted in a Star Wars setting. It could be scary as Hell. It would actually be something like this from the Clone Wars cartoon directed by Samurai Jack's Genndy Tartakovsky, except without the (relatively) happy ending, and with Vader instead of Grievous:



The other possibility is just a reversal of the above situation. Instead of Vader coming to the Jedi, a group of Order 66-surviving Jedi learn where Vader's headquarters are: a lava-surrounded, very Mordor-esque castle seen and heavily implied in Rogue One to be on Mustafar, where Obi-Wan Kenobi defeated Vader and severed his limbs. Thinking they have a chance to defeat Vader, they sneak onto the planet and into Vader's castle. And though they outnumber Vader, he, in a native--tight-quarters, frightening--environment, quickly turns the tables on them. In short, it would be a Star Wars version of Don't Breathe, a horror movie released earlier this year in which a group of home invaders attempt to rob the home of a blind man, only to find that he is much prepared for them than they could have realized. Much the same as above, Vader uses the element of surprise and his overwhelming powers to hunt them all down.

Actually, though, in both stories, I think the best way to end it is for Vader not to kill everyone. I think one person should escape, either by his or her own luck/skill, or because Vader decides to let that Jedi escape. Either way, the end result is that Jedi's becoming a messenger to other surviving Jedi, and to the rest of the galaxy, that it is foolish to take on Vader. (If Vader intentionally lets this Jedi survive, then he will explicitly state this to that Jedi as his motive: "I will let you live, but only so you can serve as a messenger: Tell the galaxy how foolish it is to face me.) It will be a classic "I alone escaped to tell thee" trope. And it would work extremely well, I think. Now that I think about it, they don't even have to be Jedi in either case (maybe just one Jedi in each group or something like that), but if they all were, that would certainly underscore the extent of Vader's power. The basic ideas work regardless, as long as Vader wins.

Oh, one more thing: If we ever do see this Star Wars movie, it should be released not in December, as the last two Star Wars movies have been, or in May, as all previous ones have, but in October, aka, Halloween season. If the way to keep Star Wars interesting is to tell different stories within its broad universe, then Hush: A Star Wars Story should fully embrace its status as a horror movie by settling in the Halloween season. And maybe even make it rated R, to maximize the brutality and the horror. We'll probably never see this movie, though. But if we do, it won't be the first time I'll have been right about Star Wars.

My Top-10 favorite posts from a year of this blog

I'm still trying to live a life between runs.

It's hard for me to believe, but I have now been posting on this blog for a year. My first post, "A Life Between Runs," went live a year ago today, after a very enthusiastic response on Facebook to the possibility of my starting a blog. In that first post, I established what I'll pretentiously call the "mission statement" for this little project of mine:

I’ve started this blog mostly as an outlet for random thoughts—mostly pop cultural in nature—that I can’t or don’t want to publish elsewhere...This blog will...mostly contain my random thoughts, usually on the various popular culture products I consume (so mostly movies, books, some TV, and maybe a little music). For the real reason I’ve created this blog is that, over the past few months, I’ve found myself desperate to write about things that nobody will pay me to write about...

12 months later, I have done more or less exactly that. Though I reviewed no books here, I've reviewed plenty of movies (and even some television), commented on various social and cultural phenomena that were in vogue, gotten some thoughts out of my head that have been lingering in there for months (or even years), and written way more about Star Wars than I ever expected to, all while trying to live a life between runs. This will be my 59th post, meaning that I averaged slightly more than one post a week over the past year. I've also received about 22,000 page views, though I have no idea how many of them are unique visitors, Russian bots, or what have you. But I don't think these are the best metric by which to measure my blogging frequency. If I felt like it, I could figure out my word count, which has got to be somewhere in the tens of thousands by now. My top 10 alone includes 32,297 words (more words than are in George Orwell's Animal Farm).

To mark my one-year blog-a-versery, I've decided to list my personal top 10 favorite posts of my year of blogging. I determined these using a highly complex, arbitrary, nonexistent algorithm that I can neither explain nor defend. I will note, however, that I did take into account the overall views of individual posts in assembling and determining my top 10 and its order. I also cheated a bit and lumped a few posts together as "one," since I judged them similar enough in character and quality to do that. Also, it's my blog, so if you don't like my choices, tell me I'm an idiot in the comments section. Anyways, without further ado, here, in ascending order of personal affection (so the last one on the list is my favorite) are my top 10 favorite posts from my blog's first year, with explanations of their content and of my choice, and, of course, links to the original posts:

10) "10 Cloverfield Lane": Another (pleasant) surprise from J.J. Abrams' mystery box (1212 words)

This was a review of 10 Cloverfield Lane, one of 2016's most surprising and least appreciated cinematic gems. I liked the movie, of course: A tense paranoid thriller that may or may not be about aliens, with a terrifying John Goodman, produced by J.J. Abrams--how could I not? But this post earned its place in my top 10 because I think it is the best movie review I have written (and there are many). My goal with movie reviews is usually not merely to give my straightforward take on the movie in question. Instead, I try to write an essay of sorts about something related, reviewing the movie as a sort of tangent to or consequence of my larger thought. I think I did exactly that with this review by focusing on J.J. Abrams' creative obsession with mystery, and the strengths and weaknesses of that approach.

9) Reflections on a year since graduating college (2391 words) and The life and death of my manbun (1783 words)

Those who know me well probably know that I can sometimes dwell on--obsess over, even--the past, and also carry thoughts, ideas, and emotions with me for years on end. This post was a product of these two aspects of my character. Written a year after I graduated college, it was my attempt to analyze, assess, and come to terms with the fact that I am now fully at sail in the real world. It also became a means for me to honor the memory of my college house, whose destruction just after I left it still leaves me bitter. It is a remarkably self-indulgent work, but I make up for that, I think, by charging it with genuine emotion. Besides, if I weren't interested in being self-indulgent, then I wouldn't have started a blog in the first place. Also, this ended up being one of my blog's top-five most popular posts, which was a factor in its inclusion in this list as well.

It is with basically identical justification that I included the second post, a retrospective on the incredibly long hair I had during my senior year of college, but cut off to get the job I now have. Boy do I miss that hair...

8) I ate 5 pounds of food in a half-hour at Padrino Italian restaurant (2398 words)

The title says it all. Yet again demonstrating my strange personal characteristic of carrying ideas in my head for years before executing them, I had plotted to conquer this eating challenge at a local restaurant for at least two years before finally getting a chance to do so this past spring. Rereading the narrative, I find it thrilling, amusing, and, frankly, disgusting. I can still remember how it all felt, how close I came to throwing up, and how immobilized I was for the rest of the day afterward--especially with all of that described so vividly in the post itself. I'm not sure I'll ever do an eating challenge like this again, but this post stands as a record that I did at least once, and as proof and precedent for doing it again...if I want. It was also in this blog's top-five most-viewed posts, and justified my creating a category for posts related to food.   

7) Confessions of a former Pokémon addict (1520 words)

I loved Pokémon growing up: the cards, the movies, the games. Especially, obsessively, addictively, the games. I used the occasion of the franchise's 20th anniversary this past February to look back at my Pokémon past, and realized in doing so what should have been obvious: I was an addict. Can you blame me? Those games were freaking great; as I explained in my post here, the mad science and legendary Pokémon were two of my favorite aspects (and predicted some of my current interests pretty well, as it turned out). The North American release of Pokémon Go on my 23rd birthday this year made this post unexpectedly relevant again...and reminded me why it was so important for me not to download that mobile version of my former addiction under any circumstances. Which I did not. The lesson here, I guess, is that introspection can yield good writing, and help you avoid dangerous decisions.

6) R.I.P. Davie Bowie (1947-2016) (1030 words) and Applause for the Waco Kid, aka Gene Wilder (1933-2016) (1293 words)

2016 has proven to be a pretty brutal year for celebrity deaths. Among the first notables to go in 2016 was David Bowie, on whose behalf I wrote this blog's first--and, I think, best--eulogy, managing to summarize his career and to interpret his life through the lens of constant innovation.

But I am loathe not to mention my obituary of Gene Wilder as well, as it does a pretty job, I think, of reading more closely into the specific aspects of that celebrity's performing style that made him stand out. Both are worth a read, even though, as bad as 2016 was for celebrity deaths, I think every year after this one for the next 10-15 will be even worse.

5) In Defense of "The Force Awakens": Special Edition (Parts I-IV combined) (5522 words)

Star Wars has loomed large over this blog since its creation, largely because The Force Awakens had just come out when I created this blog, and I had just seen it. The second post I wrote here actually first existed as a Facebook note as a "pre-action" to the release of The Force Awakens, perhaps the singular pop cultural event of the past 10 years. The inadequacy of Facebook notes for delivering my massive streams-of-consciousness inspired the creation of this blog in the first place. I very much enjoyed The Force Awakens, though I soon discovered that "the Internet" had already split in half over the film, with some of its loudest voices holding it up as a tremendous disappointment. I could not let this stand, so, over a period of at least two weeks, I watched the original trilogy, read every The Force Awakens take I could find, categorized each of the major criticisms I found in them into groups, and offered rebuttals, at first, serialized into four parts, and then combined into one. In all my writing, I don't think I have ever been so thorough. My rebuttal and the process that went into creating it were so extensive, in fact, that I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch a Star Wars movie just for pleasure again. But I can at least be satisfied knowing that I'm capable of defending them.

4) Is Harambe the anti-Christ?* (2389 words) 

Remember Harambe? This past May, when a child fell into Harambe's habitat at the Cincinnati Zoo, a zoo employee shot and killed this gorilla. "The Internet" quickly resurrected him, turning him to the meme to end all memes. Or was it something more? I argued, on the flimsiest of evidence, that in fact it was: Harambe's quick deification actually indicated that there was a strong possibility he was the anti-Christ spoken of in Biblical prophecy. Do I believe this? No, especially not after the meme seems to have died once again. But boy was this a fun creative exercise for something I had never thought about before it happened, unlike many of my years-in-the-making takes. I think I proved with this post that I can make a case for or write about almost anything, and walk quite easily on the fine line between serious and absurd. My readers agreed: This was also one of my blog's top-five most popular posts.

3) My prediction for 'Star Wars Episode VIII': Rey turns to the Dark Side (5081 words)

Another Star Wars post makes its way into the top 10. This is a bit different from my defense of The Force Awakens, though the extensive knowledge of Star Wars I accrued from writing that post certainly helped this one. For this post was my attempt to flex my screenwriting muscles and predict in thorough detail how Episode VIII might unfold. I had resolved, after doing everything I could to avoid spoilers before The Force Awakens, to avoid spoilers and even speculation for Episode VIII. But a random Facebook headline I saw--something to the effect of "What if Rey turns evil?--got my imagination firing, and so I took to the blog to imagine how Rey might turn to the Dark Side, and what that would mean for everyone else. Read the post to judge for yourself, but I would see the heck out of the movie I wrote; I think I did a fantastic job of operating within the constraints The Force Awakens and the broader Star Wars universe have set up to create a dark, compelling story. I'll know this time next year if my predictions were anywhere close to correct. I hope they are, for my own vindication (I predicted an aspect of Rogue One correctly), even if the lack of surprise will disappoint me somewhat.

2) Zen and the Art of Running - 5 years later (3994 words) and The Olympics and man's search for meaning (1663 words)

I am, in all likelihood, never going to be an Olympic-caliber distance runner. I'm really not even all that good of a runner to begin with. But I'm a runner nonetheless. And so I like to think I understand, to at least some degree, what it means to live a runner's life. My understanding of this lifestyle has been the inspiration for much of my writing over the years, as well as two of what I consider my blog's best posts (which is funny, because in my first post I said that "I expect to discuss my running very little here"). The first is a revisiting of an essay I wrote in high school about running, and a consideration of what the sport means in my life now against what I thought it meant to my life back then.

The second is a reflection inspired by the end of the Olympics on what it means to be a high-achieving athlete, and how the sense of comedown Olympians feel after the Olympics to some extent mirrors how I have felt on many occasions, and, in fact, how we all feel. Somewhat unexpectedly, and probably thanks, in part, to retweets from the unlikely pair of @Dumbflotrack and @hughhewitt, this second post became my blog's most popular, reaching 1000 views. Since I consider it some of my best writing here, I'm all right with that.

---AND THE WINNER IS---


1) An Open Letter to Disney/Lucasfilm: 22.5 reasons why I should be the next Han Solo (2021 words)

I'm sure you saw this coming. This is my pride and joy, my piece de resistance, my magnum opus. Much of what I have blogged over the past year has been rattling around in my brain for a long time. But never before I read this article listing the generic young white males up for the role of young Han Solo in the prequel telling the story of his younger self had I thought that I deserved the part. But reading that article popped a stray thought in my head--something like "oh, come on. These guys don't look anything like Han Solo. They might as well cast me!"--that quickly developed into a surprisingly long and compelling list of reasons why Disney/Lucasfilm should cast me as young Han Solo.

I ran with the idea, gathering and creating evidence to fill out what became the best thing I've written in my year at this blog. The result deservedly became the most popular item on this blog, until "The Olympics and man's search for meaning" recently surpassed it. Unlike that post, however, this one had no aid from prominent retweets, but earned its popularity on the attention-grabbing clickbait of the concept and the unexpectedly persuasive content within. It may be a listicle, but it's still easily the best thing I wrote for this blog, and may be one of the best things I've ever written (for now, anyway...). Alas, it was not persuasive enough to get me the gig. But I think Disney, Lucasfilm, and audiences everywhere will end up regretting that (though less so if the creative personnel behind the movie take my screenwriting advice).

So there it is: The top 10 posts from the first year of A Life Between Runs. If you agree with my choices, think I'm neglecting something, think I'm rating something too highly, or just want to say hi, leave a comment below. I myself am pretty happy with this top 10 (a good mix of personal and pop cultural), and with the blog overall (the same). I've had a lot of fun, gotten some old thoughts out of my head, introduced some new takes to the world, and worked out my writing muscles regularly. I don't know how many of you are actually reading what I write, but from Facebook and blog comments, messages, and texts, I've learned that it's enough to make this seem to me like more than just one massive exercise in self-indulgence (though it is certainly that as well). I don't know what the next year of this blog will bring, or how frequently I'll post here. But I appreciate your readership as you've followed my efforts to live a life between runs.

The Force is strong with 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story'

Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars...

A friend of mine once forever changed the way I think about Star Wars movies. He suggested to me that the best way to understand them is to replace every instance of "The Force" in dialogue with "the plot." He believed that the Force, whatever its pseudo-/quasi-mystical qualities, was also always a way to ensure that whatever needed to happen in the story happened, and that people and events important in the narrative got the attention their writers and creators thought they needed. Thus, to say one character is "strong with the Force" is to say that he or she is "strong with the plot." When Ben Kenobi, in A New Hope, says that "the Force is what gives a Jedi his power," he actually means that "the plot is what gives Jedi his power." When Yoda, in Empire Strikes Back, says that "my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is," he's really saying "my ally is the plot. And a powerful ally it is." And so on.*

I bring this up not to cast fundamental doubts on the soundness or enjoyability of Star Wars movies; the fact that I have an entire category dedicated to them on this blog suggests that I do, in fact, like and enjoy them. I mention it because the circumstances that have given us Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the most recent Star Wars movie, have put me in mind of this sense of compulsion and willed obligation. For, as I wrote last week, Rogue One is the first Star Wars spin-off of the property's new era under the ownership of Disney. It is a prequel, but one that does not focus on the Skywalker family,* or directly advance the story continued most recently with last year's The Force Awakens. The entire purpose of Rogue One is, in fact, to make money--oh, and also, to explain in film length the following lines from A New Hope's opening crawl:

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Rogue One, then, is not only a property willed into existence mostly by the profit motive, based on a few throwaway lines from a nearly 40-year-old movie, but also a movie with a known outcome. We know how Rogue One has to end: the Rebels will get the Death Star plans. Rogue One's very existence constrains its storytelling possibilities, as much, if not more so, than the fact that it has to make a bunch of money. From all this, you might think that Rogue One is a remarkably cynical enterprise, doomed to mediocrity for lack of risk-taking but destined for success because of its brand. Well, the latter may be true (though the prequels indicate that creative success, at least, is not guaranteed for the Star Wars brand), but, remarkably, the former is not. For Rogue One's creative constraints paradoxically free it to become one of the best entries in the Star Wars canon to date.

Despite stiff competition. 

It does not do this, however, by creating compelling characters on par with Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Kylo Ren. The main cast of Rogue One consists of a Dirty Dozen/Great Escape-style ragtag ensemble; most of its members, aside from one or two distinguishing traits, are forgettable (with the standouts being Donnie Yenn's Chirrut Îmwe, a blind, plot--I mean, Force-believing mystic, and K2 [Alan Tudyk], a sassy robot). Even Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the leader of this motley crew, is hardly compelling, with her character alternating unconvincingly between apathetic thief and idealistic rebel, albeit undergirded by an admittedly pathos-laden relationship with her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen, fresh off a villainous role in Doctor Strange in November). No, the Rogue Squadron itself is mostly forgettable. As is Director Krennic (Ben Mendelssohn), the striving, not-really-all-that-evil, mid-level Imperial bureaucrat who serves as their primary antagonist**.

The movie also succeeds in spite of a story and some action scenes within that bite off a bit more than third-time director Gareth Edwards (of 2014's Godzilla reboot, on which I had some fond words here), is quite ready to chew. The narrative is relatively straightforward, and moves quickly--so quickly, in fact, that we sometimes don't realize why some things happen, or why certain characters are doing what they're doing, except that the Force and the plot demand it. And sometimes, there is simply so much going on in front of us that we can't quite follow it, though we know we're still supposed to be impressed by the ambition thereof.

Yet the genius of Rogue One is to be good enough in its execution and overall atmosphere to render these complaints minor quibbles. For while the action can at times be confusing, when it is not, it is easily the most brutal and visceral of anything we've seen in a Star Wars movie. We've never had as full an immersion in realistic, extensive, ground-based infantry combat in this universe before (though it has happened in bits and pieces). Rogue One promised to deliver on this front, and, at its best, it does exactly that (despite my concerns), even breathing new life into the classic aerial dogfights with some fresh visual and strategic approaches and innovations. And it creates, as a backdrop to that gritty combat, an appropriately nuanced view of the struggle between the Rebellion and the Empire. The Empire doesn't definitively win, and the lines are still clearly drawn, but there is a lot more violence, death, and setbacks, and there are a lot more gray areas. Rogue One proved that a Star Wars movie can still make its action and drama interesting, even if nobody has a lightsaber***.

"Excuse me, I believe you're forgetting someone..." 

The most impressive feat of Rogue One is its simultaneous fitting into and distinguishing itself from the larger Star Wars universe. Though it links itself to the movies we all already know and love many times***, it brings enough novelty into its tone, its action, its settings, and its approach to story and characters to be appreciated on its own. Where some might have seen only constraints and limitations imposed by everything it had to accomplish, and all that it could not do, the creative personnel of Rogue One saw an opportunity to create something new out of something familiar, and they seized it. While it may not rise, as a whole, to the heights of the best Star Wars, it contains plenty of individual moments, images, and general merit to earn a proper place in the franchise family. And, more important, it has proven that the Star Wars universe, now approaching its 40th anniversary, is not old and creaking, but young, vibrant, full of possibility, and may only be just beginning to be explored. May the Force--and the plot--be with us as we see where else we go in this galaxy far, far away.

*Even The Force Awakens works: It becomes The Plot Awakens, which makes perfect sense. It was the first live-action Star Wars movie of any kind in 10 years, and the first to move that universe's narrative forward in 35.
**You could also argue that Grand Moff Tarkin, played by a CGI-resurrected Peter Cushing, is also a main antagonist. But the most interesting thing about his character is that the actor who portrays him has been dead for 22 years, and Rogue One was able to return him to life in mostly convincing fashion, which means that we now have the ability to resurrect long-dead actors (I want to know how many people who didn't know he was dead thought something was off about him; I knew, and I still impressed, though it wasn't perfect). Ponder the possibilities and the ethics of this.
***Actually, somebody does have a lightsaber. It's Darth Vader. And, just as I predicted last week, he shows up and absolutely brutalizes people in terrifying fashion. It's awesome, in both senses of the word.
****Rogue One has many Easter Eggs, and ends up being almost a direct prequel to A New Hope.