Let it be.

I'm sure i'm not the first person ever to make this connection but I did make it under my own power.

          George Lucas is infamous for going back and mucking about with his work (and indeed the work of others.) Years after the original Star Wars trilogy was released he went back through them and re-edited the films in order to 'improve them.' To many die-hard fans of the series this decision was offensive. The films were already released. They were great. What more did they need? The trilogy had stood the test of time and had etched itself into the public consciousness. They were adored. For some reason though Lucas felt that he could take these great films and make them even better. There's a saying in the film world, "Great films are never finished they are just abandoned." Meaning there is literally no end to what you can do with a film. You can edit and re-edit. You can do re-shoots. You can do voice over and change the soundtrack. There comes a point though when you must simply stop. Like raising a child you cannot continue to parent for an eternity. You have to let them out from under your wing and hope to God they can fly on their own knowing all you have taught them.
          Lucas doesn't adhere to this creed. Like an overprotective parent he keeps calling his children up and trying to bottle feed them the elemental skills they have already proven to everyone else they have acquired. This insecurity with his work didn't begin with Star Wars. It began with THX 1138 his very first feature film. THX 1138, a story about a dystopian future where sex is illegal, began life as a short film created while Lucas was a student. The short film can be viewed on the special edition DVD of THX 1138. It's a finished and published work of fiction. Why then did Lucas feel the need to revisit and rehash this old story? Instead of allowing the work to exist as it was he felt the need to take it back and re-create it. Are you seeing the parallels? This is the worst kind of thing you can do to these projects. Finishing something and letting it stand on it's own two feet is the necessarily final step in creating a work of art. What if Michaelangelo had returned to the Sistine Chapel years after painting the ceiling and told Pope Julius II that he had some improvements to make? Pope Julius II would have, if he had any sense, told him flatly "no." He and the rest of the congregation had grown to love the work of art. Any work of significance offers the viewer a link to the mental state the creator was in when the piece was made. The flaws are a part of it's story and offer insight into the steps of his journey the artist was on. Any ideas that are outdated offer a glimpse into the mindset of the culture when the work was created.

          When I was attending Compass I wrote and directed a short film called Prudence. I should warn you it is a very flawed piece. It was the first film I ever wrote that went into production. The only one actually.
          At the end of the semester we screened our video in front of all the other students and critiqued each others films. I received a lot of positive feedback but also a lot of very fair criticism. With all the commentary from students and teachers rolling through my mind I went and sat down with my school mentor Evan Koons. We talked about the problems with the film. I told him I wanted to try again. I said, 'I think (and still do) that the basic premise of the story has merit and that with the knowledge I had gained from the process I could make a better film the second time around.' Evan told me that under no circumstances should I do any such thing. The project existed, it was finished and to revisit the film in any attempt to improve it would only invalidate the lessons I had learned in the process.
          When you look back on something you have made the flaws in it serve as a reminder to you. They are the mile markers of your journey as an artist. There's very little interesting or glamorous about mile marker 5 on a journey of 500 miles, but you have to pass it. If after every road trip you went on you said to yourself, " I could do that better, I could have achieved a higher MPG, I could have stopped fewer times, if I had planned it right we would have eaten at that fun little diner and not Taco Bell," you would never drive anywhere new. You would just keep going back to the same roads over and over again revisiting the exact same trip, trying to do the same thing even better. Voltaire said, "The perfect is the enemy of the good" If you refuse to settle for anything but perfection you'll miss all the good opportunities life has to offer. You'll probably never complete anything either. I'm not saying don't have high standards of work but there is in all things a balance to strike.
          Have you ever picked up a paper you wrote in early college or high school and read it again years later? It's painful. You can't see the person you are now having written the things you did then. Do you decide to retake the class in a attempt to do the exact same thing better? Of course not. You recognize that you are a better writer now, a more well rounded individual, and you ascribe these changes to the kind of experiences you have had... such as writing that paper.
          So Lucas didn't just decide on a whim to go back and make the Special Edition Star Wars films, he started his career by going backwards. Is it possible that he would have made a terrible film as his first instead of the mediocre THX 1138 had he chosen not to attempt his remake? Yes of course it is. The point though is this. If you spend your whole artistic career going back to what you've already finished and reopening those old wounds you will never make anything new. So I implore you; learn from George,
let it be.

To turn a phrase, "A critic is everyone." See what I did there? I turned the phrase.

      We are all critics. We are quick to speak our minds about movies that suck, bands that blow, and food that tastes terrible. I recognize that diversity of opinion on these issues of taste is important and even necessary. That said there are some things that just shouldn't be. Let me tell you a story. A story about the cupcake that should never have existed.

      Consider if you will this cupcake. innocuous, beautiful, and seemingly delicious. You'd be forgiven for thinking all those things. You'd also be wrong. For you see this cupcake is in fact a crime against food. This cupcake takes the holy art of baking, with all it's rules of flavor and texture, by the throat and strangles them to death while screaming incoherently in a noise reminiscent of cavemen.

      "What's wrong with the cupcake?" You ask. Good question. Let me explain. This cupcake began life innocently enough as a carrot cake and cream cheese confection. The cream cheese is on the inside and there isn't very much. just enough to add that smooth creamy texture to the nutmeg cinnamon spice of the cake. It was great, it was good, it was ready to eat and enjoy. Then... disaster. A giant oaf of a man came along and spread a sickly sweet icing all over this perfectly good cupcake. WHY???
I understand that sugar fixes everything when you're eight but as you grow older you learn there's more to the way a thing tastes than how sweet it is.

      This cupcake was defiled due to some arcane belief that food eaten during easter has to adhere to a certain color palette regardless of how it may offend the palette of your tongue. This was all bad enough as it was but then in an unprecedented move of astonishing tastelessness it got worse. Those round treats on the top of the cake are Skittles.(tm) As if the quantity of sugar present in the icing wasn't already enough to push this cake in to the realm of super sweet the oaf in question added Skittles.(tm) Now without a doubt our poor cupcake has been hurled past the realm of super sweet and straight into the pit of inedibility.
      "But wait... There's more."(tm) Yes it gets even worse. As may fingertips work the keys my strength fails me. I can hardly type the following words. I'm feeling faint with a mixture of rage and sorrow. The Skittles(tm) aren't just any kind. They are... Sweet and Sour!
Good taste R.I.P. We will all mis you.

The longest first post to a blog ever, which is about a truck, and a trailer.

I wrote this for my COM 210 class and then rewrote it to post it here. I never actually shared it with them because I umm, didn't I guess. The class was called non-verbal communication and was about... You guessed it.

         When I was 16 I was driving my parents very nice 1994 Chevy Suburban. It was 8 years old at the time and was by far the newest car they had ever owned. I was driving it because my Bronco was in a state of massive disrepair. One day I borrowed the Suburban and my dad's trailers to pick up some parts for my Bronco. I was getting these parts from a junkyard my buddy worked at. We had big plans to make a whole day of it. Working in a junkyard together, diving into old trucks, and yanking the parts I needed to fix mine. It would have been a great day for two car nuts like us. Would have been except on the way dad's trailer broke. The rusty old U-bolts holding the axle onto the leaf spring had shorn off from decay. I noticed this had occurred when I looked out the passenger side mirror and saw that the trailer was skewed massively to the right side. Half behind my truck and half driving down the shoulder. It  looked like it was trying to pass me on the right. We limped it back to my buddies' place. Flipped it upside down and set about repairing it. After assessing the damage we went to Bob's house. Bob had just bought a new trailer for himself to replace his old rusty one. We kindly took his old one. Then using the axle from it, and new nuts and bolts from the hardware store, we turned two broken trailers into one working one. It wasn't until after dark that we finally had it done. 

        We loaded the rusted, disassembled, and scavenged from hulk of Bob's trailer onto my dad's trailer. As we drove to the junkyard I thought about how happy my dad would be when I brought his newly repaired trailer home to him. I had sacrificed all of the things I wanted to do that day in order to fix my dad's trailer for him. We arrived. I backed up to a pile of trash, hooked the hulk onto a piece of machinery using a tow strap, and drove away. As I did so Bob's trailer was pulled off of the good trailer. Then (stupidly) I backed up, forgetting I still had a trailer behind me, and jackknifed the trailer I had just repaired into the rear quarter panel of my parent's beautiful suburban. This left a football sized dent in my parent's truck. For the next 20 minutes I stood by this dent swearing at myself and my own stupidity while my buddy tried his hardest to console me. After I calmed myself down a bit I drove home as prepared as I could be to face my parent's wrath. It was late and they had both gone to bed. I decided it was better to see if they were still awake in bed rather than have one of them discover the damage the next morning. I crept up the stairs with dread in my stride and opened the door of their bedroom. My mom turned over and looked up at me obviously still very awake. "Mom" I said. "What did you do to the truck?" She asked. My jaw practically dropped. There was no possible way she could have seen the damage yet. "How did you know?" I asked, "Ohh no" she replied, "I was hoping I was wrong." I then told her the story and offered to help out as much as I could with repairing it. She told me we would look at it the next morning and I went to bed.

        This is a great example of my mother's non-verbal skills. From the way I had walked up the stairs and entered the room to the tone of my voice and the look in my eyes she had correctly assumed what had occurred that night. She also had a hint from the amount of time I was gone past what my errand should have required. It makes sense the more I think about it. Mothers spend a lot of time with their children and hear a lot of lies from them. They learn to interpret non-verbal cues and make assumptions based on common things their children do when they tell lies or try to reduce the severity of the truth.

        Funniest part of the whole story, they never fixed the dent. It remained firmly planted into the side of that truck for the rest of the time we owned it. A constant reminder to me of that day that should have been so good and all went horribly wrong because I was careless.

        Actually the best part is that the very trailer I spent that entire day fixing is now mine. My dad bought a replacement one and passed it onto my brother. Then my brother bought a replacent trailer and passed it onto me. So it sits, next to my house, ready for me to use it whenever I need a trailer. All because I spent a whole day fixing it rather than doing what I really wanted to be doing. I guess someday I'll get a new trailer and pass this one on to... my sister?