Bryce Moore's Blog, page 276

Movie Reviews: How to Murder Your Wife and Contagion

Looks like death is on the docket today. Two very different movies, one excellent but likely lesser-known, one pretty solid and more recent. Let's do the excellent one first, shall we? I thoroughly enjoyed How to Murder Your Wife. (No. I was not taking pointers. Shame on you for thinking that. And of course, now that I've searched IMDB and Amazon for "how to murder your wife," I suppose I'd better hope Denisa is super healthy and free from accidents for the next few years. Stupid Google search history. (Knock on wood.))



The film stars Jack Lemmon as a staunch bachelor who gets drunk one evening at a bachelor party and ends up marrying the girl in the cake. Oh yeah--and she only speaks Italian. If that doesn't sound like an awesome premise to you--if you're not almost compelled to go to Netflix Instantwatch and start checking it out this instant, then . . . you must be either really busy, or no fun whatsoever. The movie is very black comedy, while managing to me fun and light at the same time. Lemmon grows to both love his wife and loathe her for the changes she's wrecking on his life. His butler (hilariously portrayed by Terry-Thomas) really wants her out of the picture. Hilarity ensues. This is a movie that hasn't gotten super reviews on IMDB, but I really adored, especially taking into account the movie as a whole. I ended up giving it 5/5 stars on Netflix, though in reality it might be more on the 3.5 out of 4 star range for me. I would love to talk to some other people who have watched it.



The other movie is Contagion, a disease disaster movie from last year. Denisa and I watched this one last night, and . . . it was sufficiently creepy. It didn't follow all the disaster movie tropes--real stars in big parts actually died in the film, for one thing, as opposed to being constantly immune while lesser actors dropped like flies. But in the end, it's a disaster movie starring a disease. It makes you want to wash your hands a lot and stop touching your face so much, and maybe start stockpiling food and guns. It's well-handled, but there wasn't much to set it apart from other disease movies. Three stars, for all of that.



The scary thing about disease movies is that I can't help thinking it won't be too long before they hit far too close to home. All it takes is one mutation the wrong way, and the world as we know it could be massively affected. Contagion did a good job portraying this. Truly frightening. On the plus side, I kept watching throughout the movie as they traced the path of the disease, and western Maine never got hit hard, probably because of how few people are out here. So maybe I don't need to stockpile food out here, after all. You suckers in New York, DC, Boston and the like, though . . .



Watch out.[image error]

Boy's Night Out at Ice Hockey

Thanks to the generosity of a friend, TRC and I were able to go to an ice hockey game on Saturday evening. I've been to a few hockey games in my life--a couple of Grizzlies games out in Utah, and the Germany/Slovakia game at the Salt Lake Olympic Games. I enjoyed those experiences, but (and I'm being totally honest here) hockey has never really seemed that complex to me. A bunch of guy skate around on the ice and try to get the puck in the goal. What's so complicated about that?



Well, I was with a Canadian at the game on Saturday, and I discovered two things. First of all, there's a whole lot more to it than "puck in goal." Second, once you actually understand the rules, watching hockey is tons more fun.



Go figure, right?



It also helped that it was a fantastic game. The Portland Pirates vs. the Worcester Sharks. It went into a shootout at the end, and culminated in a five minute brawl on the ice. (Seriously, it got pretty nasty out there. I watched the YouTube version, and it seemed much tamer when I wasn't actually there watching it happen.) But hey--Portland won, so all is well in the world. It was a thrilling game, and a ton of fun to watch it in person.



I wasn't really sure what TRC would think of it all. He was wicked excited to go to the game, but I thought it might be more of a "hey--this is different" sort of a thing than a real "I want to watch hockey" thing. Plus, it's an hour and a half ride down to Portland, and an hour and a half back once it's over. (We didn't get home until a little before midnight.)



Turns out? He  loved it. It took him a bit to get into it. He wasn't expecting just how noisy it would be (and even then, he covered his ears for most of the game), but I think he started getting a glimpse of how exciting sports-watching can be. By the end, he was cheering and yelling along with everyone else--and he was actually paying attention to the game.



I think it helps that hockey is pretty straightforward. Puck in goal, after all. It's not like football, which I keep trying to explain the finer nuances of to him. He could tell if something went well or if it didn't. The puck either ended up in the net, or it didn't.



In any case, we had a lot of fun--even if we were a tad more tired Easter morning than we probably should have been. :-) Many thanks to the friend who asked us to come along.[image error]

How Much Implausibility Can You Get Away With?

I've written about realism in the movies and fiction before, but I want to take a different approach to it today. Last night, Denisa and I watched Tower Heist. For those of you who don't know, it's a caper film about some high-class apartment building employees who decide to rob a Wall Street fat cat, since he Ponzi'ed them out of their pensions. Looking over the IMDB page, it looks like it was originally conceived as an African American Ocean's Eleven, and indeed, it even has one of the same writers as that film. (Although one red flag is that it has FIVE writers listed in the credits. Not often a sign of a solid script.)



We enjoyed the movie. It was fun, in a caper-y sort of way. I'd give it a light hearted three stars, maybe two and a half. Eddie Murphy is better in this than he's been in a live-action movie in years, mainly because he's playing a character with a backbone, and not a Disney lead. (Go figure.) Ben Stiller is very Ben Stillery, and the rest of the cast is solid, if not necessarily out-of-the-ballpark good.



But what I really want to talk about is the plot. I'll try not to give away too many spoilers, since some of you might want to watch the movie at some point. Let's just say that the laws of physics don't necessarily seem to be followed consistently throughout the movie. Key plot points--seemingly insurmountable plot points--are glossed over off camera. In other words, what you actually see in the movie defies all probability. What you DON'T see in the movie is just plain never going to happen.



And yet it does, and we're supposed to be okay with that.


And you know what's funny? I kind of am okay with it. What's up with that? (For a fuller discussion of just how ridiculous the plot is, go here. But there are major spoilers there, so watch out.)



When I'm writing a book, coming up with a plot, I'll often get to a spot where I have no idea how in the world the protagonist gets out of the bind I've put him/her in. I've always taken the approach of solving things in a manner that's at least fairly plausible. I've never just put in a section break, said "twenty minutes later," and then have the problem magically solved. Mainly because I worry about irritating or alienating my audience.



And yet as an audience member, I was kind of okay when they did just that in this movie.



As I think about, it comes down to whether I want my books to be okay/good, or great/incredible. The plot of Tower Heist is okay/good. The plot to Ocean's Eleven is fantastic, in my boo. The twists totally work. Not because they're incredibly believable, but they're believable enough. Yes, if I take a step back and start studying the plot too hard, then there starts to be some holes here and there, but it passes when I'm in the moment.



Tower Heist doesn't pull off that stunt. I kept getting thrown out of the movie, wondering just how ridiculous and unbelievable they could really get. That's not a recipe for a great movie.



Am I alone here? Do most people just not care? How much belief are you willing to suspend before you cross the threshold and give up on expecting the movie or book to be believable? How much should I care as an author?



Deep questions for a Friday, I know. I'd be interested to hear your take on it, though.

On Being the Husband of a Baker

I never really thought I'd be the husband of a baker. I don't think Denisa ever really thought she'd be a baker. She'd thought about it. Toyed with the idea. She's always loved exploring new bakeries for as long as I've known her. She likes to talk to bakers. See what tips they have. Find out what their life is like. And she mentioned in passing a few times that it would be nice to do that.



Last night, when she was working on decorating dozens of Easter cookies, it hit me: I'm married to a baker.



Smarter people than I would have seen the signs earlier, of course. The fact that she bakes 40 or more loaves of bread in a week sometimes. Her tendency to supply bread to other stores, who then mark up that bread and sell it on to other people. The fact that she has a regular client list and a Facebook page I helped her set up. All of these are tell-tale signs that most thinking people would know to recognize. Heck--I even helped her make her logo, and helped come up with the name "Breadweavers."



So why did it take until now for this all to sink in?



For one thing, the night before, she was actually baking all those cookies. So it was two nights in a row that she was working hard at this. I sometimes need repeated clues before I pick up on things, and it helps to have those clues repeated close together.



I think the main reason I didn't pick up on it was because it sort of snuck up on us. First she toyed with the idea, then she found a recipe, then she worked on perfecting it. I'd come home to some various flour-based goodie each day. Some of them good, some of them just okay, but all of them getting continually better. And then she was baking loaves for friends. And then selling a loaf or two to a couple of people. But it wasn't a business, right? It was just friends.



Not anymore. When she's making more than 40 decorated egg cookies in the space of two days, there's no other way of looking at it.



I'm married to a baker. She's been at it for something like two years now.



How does it feel?



Full, most of the time. :-) My diet certainly doesn't thank me. (Though I think it resents my tendency to eat too much Indian food more than the loaves of bread.) My house smells heavenly most days, as long as you like the smell of fresh-baked bread.



I'm also very proud of her. She's done this from the ground up, and she did it the hard way. She's gone to classes about running businesses. She's learned new technologies, figured out inventory systems, come up with ways of giving receipts, understood Maine law--it's a complicated process. But it's also a doable one. Just like writing a book was for me. It can seem overwhelming at first, but as you dive into it and teach yourself, you find out that what seems daunting at first is really just a really tall staircase. You work on each step, one at a time.



In any case, when we moved to Maine four years ago, it was as a librarian and an ESL teacher. Somehow in the intervening years, we've become an author and a baker at the same time.

What's Your Favorite Con/Heist Flick?

I was going to write an in-depth post about how great my signing went last night, but I've felt like I've been hammering Vodnik a bit too hard lately, and I wanted to hold off on that and go in a different direction for today's post. (Although I will say that the reading went really well. After all the wondering which section from the book I should read, I ended up just going with the first chapter. Original, I know. Thanks to all who came, and to the Farmington Public Library and Devaney Doak & Garrett for their help!)



In any case, I'm shifting gears as I start work on a new book. My last one was a noir. The new one? I'm going with a con/heist vibe. To get ready for it, I've been rewatching a bunch of my favorite con/heist movies. Some of them are ones you've no doubt seen. Hopefully there are some that will be new to you, and you can check them out. And ideally, there are some you love that aren't on the list. I'd really like to see those--more "research." :-)



No discussion of con movies would be complete without starting with the best con movie of all time: The Sting. I've seen this movie more times than I can remember, and each time it's just a joy. The interaction between Robert Redford and Paul Newman: perfect. Robert Shaw as Lonnegan: fantastic. And the con itself is just a beauty. Many movies have tried to pull off this same effect--conning the audience at the same time they con the mark in the film. I don't think any film has done it better than this one. The plot is twisty turny, you care about the characters. It's just a flat out fantastic film, and anyone who hasn't seen it is really missing out.



You've also got the more modern Brothers Bloom, a film I saw not too long ago and really enjoyed. I need to rewatch this one to see if it holds up to repeated viewings, but at the time I saw it, I loved the whole thing. And that's saying quite a bit, since I'm not really much of an Adrien Brody fan. I don't think this movie is as universally awesome as The Sting, but for me, it was a great flick.



And then you have the wonderful Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which does both con and comedy supremely well. This is such a quotable movie (Why does Ruprecht have a cork on his fork?), and is strong enough to bear up under many viewings. Steve Martin and Michael Caine are pitch perfect throughout. Love this one.



Inception of course is a stand out, although I kind of wonder if it belongs in this list, just from the fact that it's more of a sci-fi/fantasy than the rest. Still a great movie.



Other con movies that definitely warrant discussion include Snatch (still in my memory as one of my favorite Brad Pitt roles, though I wonder if I'd still think that today), Catch Me If You Can (awesome John Willaims soundtrack, and great turns by Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio), The Spanish Prisoner (Steve Martin as a maybe bad guy? Nice!), Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is also nicely convoluted, and The Killing is noir-con at its best (and directed by Kubrik, too!)



And then you have heist movies, which have excellent representatives in Ocean's Eleven, The Italian Job, Sneakers. As I look through IMDB and other movie lists online, I realize there's a slew of these out there, and I'm skipping over quite a few that just didn't sing to me as much as others. (Matchstick Men was good, but not great for me, for example. Should I give it another shot?)What I'm really looking for is a movie that combines cons, heists, and fun--like Ocean's Eleven. Cool criminals, but not really awful people.



Okay--I've done my best to prime the pump. Now who's got some suggestions for me?

Author Interview: Kimberly Pauley

Last month, Kimberly Pauley (illustrious author of Cat Girl's Day Off) interviewed me over on Read It and Laugh. This month? I had the chance to return the favor. Cat Girl is the other book being published by my publisher this season (or is it THE book, and Vodnik is the "other book"?) The premise? In a world where superpowers are real, one girl is bestowed with a bummer of one: she can talk to cats.



(Me personally? This wouldn't be that big of a deal. I interact with cats maybe once or twice a year. (Now if it were dogs, on the other hand . . . ))



Here's the description from Amazon:

Never listen to a cat. That will only get you in trouble. Actually, scratch that. Listening to cats is one thing, but really I should never listen to my best friend Oscar. It s completely his fault (okay, and my aspiring actress friend Melly s too) that I got caught up in this crazy celebrity-kidnapping mess. If you had asked me, I would have thought it would be one of my super-Talented sisters who d get caught up in crime fighting. I definitely never thought it would be me and my Talent trying to save the day. Usually, all you get out of conversations with cats is requests for tummy rubs and tuna. Wait . . . I go back to what I said first: Never listen to a cat. Because when the trouble starts and the kitty litter hits the fan, trust me, you don t want to be in the middle of it.

I have to add that I'm currently reading the book and thoroughly enjoying it. (It has Ferris Bueller references. What's not to enjoy?) So without further ado, I present to you, the interview:


Q: Reading up on your book some, it seems like Ferris Bueller has a big role in the book. What's the story there, and why Ferris?



A: There's a couple of reasons. One is that Ferris Bueller's Day Off is one of my favorite movies of all time, right up there with The Princess Bride and Adventures in Babysitting and Star Wars and Earth Girls are Easy and...um, we could be here all day. Two is that I was living in Chicago at the time and Ferris, of course, lives in Chicago. The city is practically a character in that movie.



The idea for the book had started with the simple idea of a girl who could talk to cats and her thinking it was a really useless superpower. How was I going to show her that it wasn't? Somehow I hit upon the idea to incorporate modern day celebrity culture into it, which made me start thinking about movies (and crashing movie sets) and since the book was set in Chicago, that naturally led me to Ferris...



One of the things I love about Ferris is that he is supremely confident. Nat isn't. Actually, most teenagers aren't. Heck, most adults aren't. What can we all learn from Ferris?



Q: I have to ask: Ferris, Cameron, Sloane, or Jeanie (the main characters from Ferris Bueller). Who are you most like, and if you could hang out with only one of them, who would you pick, and why? 



A: Ouch. Um. Probably a combination of Cameron and Sloane maybe? I can't say I really identify with Jeanie. And as much as I'd love to be like Ferris (who wouldn't?), I don't have quite the...um...panache to pull that off. And of course I'd want to hang out with Ferris! There's no telling where you'd wind up!



Q: Your book is about a girl who can read the thoughts of cats. What's the worst thing about that power? Best thing?



A: The worst thing? Knowing what cats think. All the time. Because a lot of them are preoccupied with things like tuna and smelly socks and digging for treasure in the litter box. The best thing would be the secrets you could get from them. After all, everyone talks to (and in front of) their cat. No one thinks twice about it.



Q: What's your favorite thing about being an author? Least favorite?



A: Hearing from fans. Well, and getting the stories out of my head. Otherwise they'd drive me crazy in there. Least favorite would be having to worry about the business aspects of it all. Oh! And the waiting!



Q: In your questions to me, you asked me what I told people when they asked me why they should read my book, and you hinted that you'd come up with the answer when people asked you the same thing. Please share.



A: When I had to answer that recently, I said I want to make people laugh. Out loud. In public. Well, with this book at least. You know, spread some joy in the world.

Business--and a Reading/Signing Tuesday Night!

So it's come to my attention that I fail at telling people what's happening in my life. (You'd figure I'd be better at it, seeing as how I have this blog. You'd be wrong.) I haven't told a lot of people I have a signing coming up, and I'm going to Reading Roundup next week in Augusta. (That's a conference for school and public librarians in Maine. I just found out this morning that hundreds and hundreds of librarians go to this. Exciting!)




So let's try this again:



I've got my first real reading and signing tomorrow evening (Tuesday) at 7pm at the Farmington Public Library. Of course, as I was going to write this blog post, I realized I really ought to--you know--have something to read. I've never done one of these things before. What's typical?





Should I just read the first chapter? First chapter and a chapter from farther in? Any of you who have read the book--any suggestions?




For now, I'm thinking I'll likely read the first chapter, and then maybe a snippet from later in the book. Probably nothing longer than 15 minutes of reading or so--is that about right? I think I'll do a Q&A after that, and then sign books.




There's going to be punch and cookies, which personally sounds like a good deal to me. I show up pretty much anywhere there's free punch and cookies. It's like a Bryce summoning spell. Santa comes out for milk. Me? Punch. But cookies are the constant.




Seriously, if you've got ideas of things you've seen authors do at these, do share. I've been to some readings, but not many.




And as for the me-not-telling-everybody-everything bit . . . I apologize. I had no idea some of this stuff would be so mind-spinning. Being a published author is very very different from being an aspiring author. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Like I said last week, I was an aspiring author for 10 years or so. I had a lot of practice at that, and it boiled down to "Write one book. Revise it. Send it off for hopeful publication." And just keep repeating that process.




Now? I have marketing efforts to think about for Vodnik. I finished the final draft of Tarnhelm (for now), and my agent's shopping it around. And I'm working on plotting my next book--not a sequel to either of the other ones. (Almost ready to start writing, at this point. Yay!) That's three wholly different books, and I have to pay attention to all of them to one extent or another.




Very different than writing one book and forgetting about it while I focus on a new one.




So sorry if sometimes things get a tad scattered in my brain. I'm busy thinking about promotional t-shirts, blog interviews, newspaper interviews, plotting, readings, signings, books to bring to signings, upcoming blog posts, writing group submissions, revisions . . . . and that's just the writing side of me.




I think this clip from the Princess Bride sums it up best. (Anybody want to guess which one--no fair peeking!)




See you tomorrow--hopefully at the signing!

On American Remakes of International Films

I've decided one of the best ways to decide what movie to watch is to find out what international movies are being remade by Hollywood, and then watch the international version instead. Denisa and I watched La Chevre the other night (IMDB rating: 7.1), a very fun French film that was later remade as Pure Luck, with Martin Short and Danny Glover (IMDB rating: 5.1. See a difference?).



I had seen the remake years ago, and I remembered enjoying it as a light piece of fluff. So when I saw La Chevre pop up on Netflix Instant, I decided to give it a whirl, and I'm very glad I did. The premise is simple: a very unlucky girl goes missing, and so a very unlucky man is sent after her to find her. They're both unlucky in the extreme. If one chair is broken among fifty, they'll inevitably choose that chair to sit in. Accidents happen wherever they go. All the time.



The French original has a lot of really creative bits in it. Not quite a family film (Pure Luck was, as I recall)--it's got some risque elements, but nothing that pushes the PG-13 boundaries. Definitely a fun three stars, where the remake was maybe 2 or 2.5.



So many people complain that film adaptations are never as good as the books they're based on. That's debatable in my book--comparing oranges to apples. A fair fight is American remakes to their international counterparts. I've watched a fair number in my time, and they're always worse. 13 Tzameti, La Femme Nikita, Seven Samurai, Let the Right One In, The Orphanage--all great movies. All remade for America, because apparently American audiences don't like to read subtitles.



Sigh.



What's so bad about subtitles? They're tons better than dubbing, which just ruins a movie for me. You can still get a sense of the original acting, the emotion, the mood, through subtitles. A sense you lose when you dub. And when you remake the entire film . . .



Look at it this way. The original was made by people who felt passionate about the material, typically. They created the idea from infancy on. The remakers? They took the idea fully formed, then xeroxed it into a different language. A copy is never as good as the original. Sure, you have cases where the remake is done with care and effort. Sometimes you end up a with a really good end result, but more often than not? Dreck. Take a 4 star movie and turn it into a 3 star. It's a travesty.



Or am I just a film snob?



Such is my lot in life.



Anybody out there got any remakes they really loved? Or ones they just hated once they were remade? Please share--what to watch, and what to avoid.[image error]

On Being Interviewed by a Reporter

As some of you saw in my Facebook and Twitter feeds, I had an interview today with a reporter from the Lewiston Sun Journal. She plans on having an article in tomorrow's paper, so you can check there in the morning and see how it ended up.



It wasn't a particularly long interview--maybe 25 minutes or so. But it did feel kind of surreal, in a "why in the world does this woman actually want to interview me" sort of a way. Don't get me wrong--I'm glad to have been interviewed, and I'd happily do it again. It's just that I still don't really feel like an "author."



Of course, I'm not sure when that feeling will finally set in--or if it ever will. When I go to conferences and sit on panels, when I go to dinners with other authors, I feel like an author then for a bit. An hour or two. But then I leave the dinner or the panel ends, and I'm back to just being me.



I think that's the way life is a lot of the time. You think that when you get something you've wanted for a long time--when you finally reach a goal or finish a long task--that you'll Feel Different. Not that trumpets will blare or someone will pop out from around a corner with balloons and confetti, but that something will change. There will be a difference in the you before that event and the you afterward.



There's no difference.



I wrote for 11 years without being published by a New York publisher. I've now had a book in print for a little over a week. I've got 10 years of experience being an aspiring author, 1 year of experience being a soon-to-be-published author, and now 1 week of experience being a published author.



I guess it makes sense that I still feel like a pretender.



Or maybe it's that I keep waiting for someone to pop out from around the corner with a camera to tell me that this was all an elaborate prank.



In any case, that's all I have for you today. See ya'll tomorrow. (Or not--I'll be in Boston for much of the day. Not sure if I'll have something for the blog or not. So keep an eye out for that newspaper article. It might be all you get from me.)



And mega-kudos to you if you get the movie film reference for today. I went pretty out there this time.[image error]

A Ramble on Race, Violence, and Uninformed Opinions

Ah geez. I'm probably going to hate myself for posting about this later, but what's the point in having a blog if you don't wade into controversial subjects now and then? Trayvon Martin. I know not all of you who read this blog follow the news too closely, so let me sum up the case as I understand it right now. Trayvon, a 17 year-old black kid, was walking home near Orlando. He had on a hooded sweatshirt, and he was carrying a bag of Skittles and a bottle of ice tea. A half-white, half-Latino man (George Zimmerman) saw Trayvon and thought he looked suspicious. He called 911 to report this suspicion, and started following Trayvon, despite the fact that 911 told him he didn't need to do that. Oh yeah--and Zimmerman was carrying a gun.



Something happened in the next few minutes. It's not clear what. What is clear is that at the end of those minutes, Trayvon was shot and killed.



In the aftermath, no small number of people have spoken out about this case, and it's proving to be quite the firestorm. You've got people accusing the media of painting Zimmerman in an unfavorable light. He wasn't racist. He was a loving father. They're using unflattering pictures of him to make him look like a criminal. And other people launch in on the other side. The press is being too light on Trayvon. They're using flattering pictures of him to make him look innocent. He'd been suspended from school. And so on and so on.



I'm not here to say what side is right and what side is wrong. Why? Because like almost all of the people commenting on the case, I don't live anywhere near Florida, let alone Orlando. I didn't know Trayvon, and I don't know Zimmerman. It's understandable that after the fact, both Trayvon and Zimmerman have all sorts of people speaking up about what great people they were or are. That's what people do when bad things happen to people they like. The thing is, there's always something good to say about people. It has no real bearing on what the person was actually like in that moment.



Do wonderful people murder in a moment of rage and fear? Yes.



Do wonderful people strike out at strangers in a moment of rage and fear? Yes.



Did that happen in this case? I have no idea, and neither do you, in all likelihood.



But wait--I'm not done. Because to all the people saying "This case is irrelevant," because of various and sundry reasons, I'd say anytime you get something that causes this big of a firestorm, it's hardly irrelevant. What is irrelevant is why it started, at this point. Trayvon could have beat Zimmerman within a breath of his life, with no provocation whatsoever, and that wouldn't matter at this point. (Please note--I'm not saying he did. Please note--I'm not saying he didn't.) The boulder's rumbling down the mountain, and all the "But ______ is what really happened" in the world ain't gonna stop it.



And why did it get to this point?



Because this case sheds light on a reality. Minorities are judged and forced to live by a different set of standards than non-minorities.



Fact.



You can clamor all you want that you're not a racist, and that the world has moved on, and that everyone should just be judged by their actions, not their skin color or sexual orientation or gender. Ain't gonna make a difference to that singular fact.



Let's take race out of this for a moment, and see if it look any different on either side. I'll paint two scenarios, trying to make them as one-sided as possible. Seventeen year old kid is walking home wearing a hoodie. Adult male thinks he looks suspicious, calls it in. ('Cause hoodies, like it or not, freak some people out apparently.) Adult male follows the kid.



Scenario A: Kid tries to get away. Adult confronts him more. Kid defends himself by taking a swipe at the adult (Zimmerman's nose didn't break itself, people), and adult shoots and kills the kid.



Scenario B: Kid goes up and confronts adult. Knocks him to the ground and starts banging his head into the pavement. Adult shoots and kills the kid.



Now, let's take away the fact that Zimmerman looks like a guy who can take care of himself in a fist fight. And the fact that Trayvon looks like he'd have a hard time going up against a guy of Zimmerman's size. I can see scenarios where both of these play out. Where Zimmerman's the victim who narrowly escaped, or where Trayvon is the victim who died. (As much as people like to say 17 year-olds are children, I've met some pretty darn scary 17 year-olds. Again--not saying Trayvon was one, but at night, in the dark?)



Back in the day when I read gas meters, I wasn't allowed to carry mace with me, despite the constant threat of dangerous dogs. (And ooh boy, do I have some dangerous dog stories.) Why wasn't I allowed to carry it? Because if I had it, I'd be macing the heck out of some pooches. I never was bit--though there were some scary close calls to being mauled. I never ended up needing the mace.



My point is that if you've got a gun with you, you're much likelier to end up shooting someone than if you don't have one. Did Zimmerman need to shoot Trayvon to save himself? Darned if I know.



But I don't want to turn this conversation into a debate on gun control laws. At this point, I'm not even sure where I want this conversation going.



I suppose my point is that I hope this all ends up helping the situation some. I hope all the attention this brings to racism helps further reduce the overall level of racism in this country.  I don't think it's going to wipe it away. Nothing will do that. I'm fairly certain that the more we know of the facts, the more muddled it will become.



It's easy to paint a villain when you don't know who the villain is. Once you know who that person is and what his background is--who is family is, what his hobbies are--once you make him an actual person . . . It's hard to see villains anymore.



What do I think of the Trayvon Martin case? I think it's a sad situation. One that's repeated across the country every day. Maybe not with Skittles and iced tea. Maybe not with bullets and bodies every time, but if you want to sit back and say that racism doesn't have a huge effect on this country, then I got a bridge I want to sell you while we're at it.



To the country as a whole at this point, the facts don't matter. Where we go from here, does. Instead of devoting so much energy to find out "what really happened," why don't we find out ways to keep thing like this--either Scenario A or B--from happening again?[image error]