Can we talk Game of Thrones?

The GoT Costume Contest at the Fox on March 29, 2015

This contains Spoilers for Episode 1 of Season 5 and maybe a few extremely well-disguised long-term spoilers (more like hints) for non-book-readers (Unsullied). Read at your own risk, and please don't come crying to me afterward. You've been warned.

I was lucky enough to see Episode 1 of Season 5 two weeks early at Atlanta's Fabulous Fox Theatre as part of the Atlanta Film Festival; so when I was watching as it aired last night, I'd had some time to chew on the events that transpired. I've also been reading some of what's been written about it, and a couple of things come to my mind that I haven't seen covered elsewhere.

There's been a lot of talk about the first use of flashback and a little about the use of foreshadowing. The showrunners were quick to point out that it's not really flashback if it's the first scene, so not flashing back from anything. But, c'mon, guys, splitting hairs are we now? What I was struck by when I watched last night (don't remember thinking this the first time through), was that Cersei's long slow march in mourning black up the steps to the Great Sept of Baelor might be foreshadowing. It turned the show's focus on life in King's Landing starkly towards Religion, especially in combination with her awkward meeting with her cousin and former, um, playmate (among other things), Lancel Lannister. Young Lancel has changed his appearance, his entire demeanor, significantly, bearing the clasped hands and terrifying smile that always and only mean the certainty of rectitude that comes from the most absolute form of fundamentalist religion. We also see it on Stannis' wife Selyse's face while Melisandre officiates at the faith-specific "justice" meted out at the end of the episode in the name of their deity, R'hilor. It's not the religion that's wrong so much as it is the fundamentalism, the absolute belief that one thing is Right and everything else is Wrong. These are very strong hints that this already prominent theme is expanding. It's certainly one that resonates in our little world today.

There were quite a few departures from the books last night; some of them were pretty big. Mance Rayder's story line was changed pretty radically, as was that of Littlefinger (Petyr Baelish) and Sansa Stark. Could we be leaving Alayne behind? And where in the world are they going? As the hints were strong that Tyrion and Varys may be heading to Meereen to meet up with our Mother of (very, very bad) Dragons, which is totally (and thankfully) off book storyline; could Littlefinger and Sansa be headed to such exotic locales, or is it rougher terrain ahead for them, like Winterfell? I have no idea and can't wait to find out. Is it next Sunday yet?

I'm sure there's so much I've missed, but those were the nagging thoughts I'd wanted to bring up elsewhere but decided to put here.

Valar morghulis, y'all, and, just between us, Jon Snow knows quite a lot.

Coming Out Against High Heels

I'm astonished that this needs doing, but it does. I look at today's young women, so confident and poised in their bodies and embracing their sexuality. Then I look at their bound, contorted feet, and all that flies out the window.

This is some broken thing, some rift in the rightness of the universe, cosmic consonance disturbed, wrongly routed.

"But I look so much better/thinner/taller," rolls out of otherwise educated, expert, enlightened minds' mouths. Comfort and health back-burnered almost without a moment's consideration for the illusion of longer legs. The reward: painfully contorted elderly feet for those lucky enough to last that long.

When I see otherwise smart women in brutally high heels, I don't see a thing of beauty; I see intelligence undermined by insecurity, neediness overwhelming accomplishment. When I see it in media professionals given the opportunity to be a role model for young girls, it becomes something worse: opportunity failed.

I just don't think platitudes about valuing who you are inside and your accomplishments above appearances ring true when spoken by women in four inch Louboutins. Such a waste of all that
confidence and ability, rendered moot by vanity. Shame on you.

They have their place, mind you, a very valuable one. They are now what they were then: Fuck Me Pumps. #NotForWork #SetAnExample #SensibleShoes #SmartIsBeautiful

Lies

I've said it a million times: There's a slippery slope between hyperbole and telling lies for dramatic effect, passing them off as truth. Some people just can't stop themselves. Prone to heavily indulging in hyperbole, I've teetered perilously close to the lies for dramatic effect and passing them off as truth precipice frequently but have managed to stave it off with thanks to those around me who've unfortunately made the folly of it glaringly clear.

Don't. Just don't. You don't need to. I don't need to. All of us have to lie sometimes. Being inappropriately direct can be hurtful to others; and all of us exaggerate on occasion, but there is just no need to lie about stupid stuff that doesn't need lyin' about for any good reason, just because it's your programmed default, your practiced act, your shame-riddled reflex, my shame-riddled reflex, our shame-riddled reflex.

Please.

It's all about the reveal

CBS News Sunday Morning was exceptional today and included interviews with Michael Keaton in advance of the release of his new, highly-touted film, "Birdman" and recent signing phenom, Sam Smith. I recommend the Keaton interview online and can't wait to see his new movie, but I'm here to talk about the Sam Smith interview.

It's been my observation that success in writing of all kinds generally stems from emotional honesty, a willingness to reveal oneself without regard for embarrassing oneself or anyone else, and that this is true whether your an essayist, a novelist, a poet, or a songwriter.

I loved what Smith said in Anthony Mason's interview this morning.

Smith: I told all my secrets on that album, my deepest and darkest secrets. I’m a very open person… to me, the things that I’ve always kept hidden were the fact that I was a bit lonely and the fact that maybe I loved someone and they didn’t love me back, and when I decided to tell the entire world that and record my record “In The Lonely Hour” – which I just didn’t think through – I didn’t realize how much I was revealing…

Mason [overdubbed]: It’s not just his voice; it’s his vulnerability that has made Sam Smith a star.

Mason: Part of your success is that you have shown all of yourself.

Smith: Yeah. I know. Hearing whole entire rooms sing back to me, “I guess it’s true, I’m not good at one-night stands.” I can’t explain the feeling. It’s unreal. You feel like you’ve just read your diary to thousands of people and they’ve gone, “It’s okay; we still love you.” 

It reminded me of Lamar White's Ashley Award acceptance speech (@cenlamar on Twitter) at Rising Tide 7 in New Orleans  (9/22/2012 - White starts at 5:00, this is at ~7:15):

These are the principals that guide my blogging and my advocacy:

Write fearlessly...[she taught me that] writing could be empowering, but in order to be empowered you must allow yourself to become vulnerable. Sometimes that means sharing things that could be painful or embarrassing, but they're important... The only way you can really reach an audience is if you expose yourself to some vulnerability, and in doing so you become empowered. Vulnerability can be empowering. 

It sounds so easy, but it's something I've never been able to do. I start and it always gets a little traction; so I pull back. It's fear, but not a completely terrible type of fearfulness. I suppose the secret is to let go of worrying you might rock the boat and embrace it.

Grimm by a mile

Tonight, I won't be DVRing "Once Upon A Time" for the first time since the show debuted. I was vested in the original cast and story, but every time they pull another set of Disney movie characters out of the vault, I become less so. Now it seems to have completely devolved into a long-running Disney ad.

It's a shame because the show had promise. When it's first season ran parallel with "Grimm" the shows both looked interesting, even equally so. It didn't take me long to favor the originality and self-deprecating humor of "Grimm" in Portland over the fairly predictable and overly commercial action in Storybrook, or Never Never Land; and now that I know they're "Frozen" I just can't bear to watch. I can at least hope for the sake of those who do watch that they won't also have to listen to that dreadfully overplayed song. Perhaps they should take their own advice and let it go. They don't merit the prime DVR bandwidth in the highly-competitive, it's a marathon not a sprint, landscape that is Sunday night television.

So, I'll wait, seriously looking forward to finding out what mythological complications, quirky reactions to awkwardly delivered spells, and unpronounceable Germanic words those wildly creative folks in Portland have in store for us this coming season. "Once Upon a Time" is simply not in the same league.

Happy

This started as a Tweet then grew into a Facebook post before finding its way over here to the long form.

I just saw a wonderful interview with Pharrell Williams on CBS Sunday Morning. After detailing Pharrell's hard-won recent rise to super-stardom, interviewer Anthony Mason tried to get the performer to take some credit for his success and acknowledge that his choices as an artist were as much calculation as they were instinct, given his long career of excellence as a songwriter and producer that went largely unnoticed by all but industry insiders. Pharrell would have no part of it; and without letting on whether he spoke of faith or fate or the elegant randomness of the universe, Pharrell answered:

When you start trying to figure out what you're the best at, that's when you become delusional, 'cause you start to believe that... You see people spin out of control like that all the time, don't you? Those are the most tragic stories, the most gifted people who start to believe it's really all them. It's not all you. It can't be all you. Just like you need air to fly a kite. It's not the kite. It's the air.

Perhaps what they were working toward but never quite reached was the notion that to ride the wave, to take advantage of that moment when the "planets align" as he put it, one has to have made the choice to be fully present, a choice we have to make over and over again, at least every day. If we don't do that, if we choose to find comfort in lying to ourselves and rationalize our pasts, if we blame others for our failures out of a need to maintain our rectitude instead of openly seeking to know specifically how we contributed to what was wrong with what got us to here, then we'll get stuck in it; and I felt like maybe that was what Pharrell was trying to say. It really isn't just the air; each one of us makes choices about how we're going to be that put and keep us in its vicinity. If you can't look hard at your mistakes, you're going to keep making them and miss that air.

Atlanta SnowJam 2014

We, meaning Atlantans, are apparently all over the national news and looking a little foolish, although we wouldn't know, since our local news has been on every channel since late yesterday morning.

For those of you who've been hiding in wireless-free caves, it snowed 2.7 inches yesterday in Atlanta and an epic traffic jam ensued. Meaning motorists were stranded on highways for 6, 7, 14, 18, 20, now 24 hours. The big problem was that it did this in the middle of a week day, but I'm getting ahead of myself. To fully understand what happened here, you must take into account all the times local municipalities, counties, and (most particularly) school systems have been criticized for shutting down for anticipated events that never materialized.

Then there were the meteorologists. "It's a WATCH!" then "It's a WARNING!" then back to WATCH and back to WARNING again. What I do know is that Fulton and DeKalb Counties, the two that make up all of Inside The Perimeter (ITP) Atlanta, were bouncing in and out of the Warning area Monday evening and were out of it when I went to bed after the 11:00 news. I also know that they were back in the Warning area and forecasted to have 1-2" of snow when the morning news came on the air Tuesday and stayed there for the remainder of the event. Of course, they were speaking for the National Weather Service, which was trying to predict where that snow line was going to be, most likely with full awareness of the fact that there were a couple of million people in that fifty mile waffle zone. I heard a local weather person say on Monday night, "This is a very difficult forecast to make, and we don't know exactly where that snow line is going to be."

Radar around noon on Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Around noon it started snowing, and anybody with access to the internet (read: everybody) could look at a radar and see that it wasn't going to stop any time soon. And then the colossal mistake was made: all the schools let out, all the businesses shut down and all nonessential government offices closed at the exact same time, and some millions poured into Atlanta's surface streets and (most importantly) interstate highways at the same time. This was primarily a traffic volume event. It was in response to a weather event, but was more about traffic than it was about weather. That is, until darkness fell, the temperature plunged and everything froze in place.

There are two asides that complicated things:

The TRUCKS. If you've been watching this full time like I have, it's impossible not to notice the tractor trailer trucks, which were a huge part of the clog (literally and figuratively). When they slide, they jack-knife, and block the whole damn road. Is there a way to close Atlanta to truck traffic and how would it be enforced? Governor Deal suggests requiring truckers to use tire chains when entering the city during a snow event. This is something that can be done at weigh stations and might have made a big difference.

The POULTRY PEOPLE. The International Poultry Expo (IPE) is in town, and there's not a hotel room to be found, anywhere. Which brings us to the comparisons. Everybody stop talking about the 2011 snow and ice event. Now. It's not relevant. This is nothing like that. This was much more like SnowJam 1982, and in 1982 folks abandoned their vehicles all over the place and walked. We had fewer people and fewer highways, so it was a little less dramatic; but the same thing happened then, but without the IPE. Thousands of people stranded in one or another of the city's many business districts just walked. Some of them walked to a friend's house, some of them walked to the nearest bar, some of them walked home; but many of them walked to and checked in at the nearest hotel. This time there was no room at the inn.

Obviously, in retrospect, the state, the city and the school systems should not have all shut down and sent folks home at the same time. That was a mistake. They should have been staggered, starting with not sending the kids to school to begin with. It's the thing that can be done with the least loss in the event it's a false alarm. If there's any public entity that should be skewered here, it's the school systems, and there are a lot of them. Is there some kind of system via which they talk to each other? I'm sure I won't get them all, but these governing entities include Atlanta Public Schools, DeKalb County Schools, Fulton County Schools, Gwinnett County Schools, Clayton County Schools, Cobb County Schools, Decatur City Schools, Marietta City Schools, you get the idea. Perhaps what we need is an organized entity that shares information across those school districts. Maybe if they had a chance to talk through it with each other, they would have reached a better decision.

Day 2 - January 29, 2014 at 14:00

So, as I watch these officials, Governor Deal, Mayor Reed, DeKalb CEO May and Sheriff Brown, DOT and GEMA spokespeople, getting grilled by the local media, I can't help but think we, the public, need to keep this in perspective so that we can all learn the lessons we need to prevent this from happening again. Governor Deal said that the DOT map of Atlanta's highways was solid green at 12:15 and solid red at 12:38. I know he's right because I watched it happen too. At 1:04, I said so on Facebook.

Way back in the olden days when I was in my twenties, I worked at MississippiRiverLand Air Lines (not its real name). We used to do recurrent training every year. We'd watch films about crashes and study NTSB reports, and after a while a pattern became obvious: it was never just one thing that caused those disasters. It was always a combination of things. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the same phenomenon in his book, Outliers. This is like that. It was a big combination of a lot of little things: the previous false alarms, the waffling forecasts, the lack of hotel rooms, everyone leaving work and school at the same time, all those big trucks on the road, when combined with the falling snow and temps, created a gridlock so intense that rescuers couldn't get through anywhere to help.

I-285 north of Atlanta on Day 2, January 29, 2013

We're on the downside of day two. There are still students and teachers stuck in schools, but they're not in danger of anything other than going stir crazy. The Georgia National Guard has arrived and is committed to rescuing everyone stuck in a car who wants to be rescued. I'm thinking about changing the channel and doing something of greater value than just watching this from the warmth of my fire-lit den. It'll take days to clean this up. Unfortunately, we'll be hearing about it for years.

Update: At 18:00 day two, local news reports that there are no longer students stuck at schools or on buses.