Capstone Week 11: Nightcap

It’s been a semester, alright.

I’ve done my full Capstone showing, now. Took me a long time to create the board, and a lot of rushing because I hadn’t kept close-enough company with the syllabus. I had to coordinate with a print shop to get my photograph-proof sent in on time, and I stood with my siblings-in-arms at one end of the Den and watched as people walked by and watched television.

Actually, I’m very happy with how everything turned out. When I made my board I designed it mostly for the benefit of the next semester’s kids, all of the Sophomores and Freshmen I’d never meet personally. And I’d expected, from the day I decided to adapt Blindsight, that I’d spend most of the showing loitering or talking about aliens with people, which is mostly what happened. It’s a niche sort of thing, and I appreciate the people who were into it enough to chat for a few minutes.

So. I’m graduating. I’ve finished the first big real-world project, the thing that’s supposed to challenge me in the same way a real creative endeavor will and push me those last few inches out of the nest. Really, I’m not sure how I feel. I’m happy that I’ve managed to accomplish so much, and I feel a lot better about my ability to manage lots of projects and responsibilities at once, but I’m also sad to go. It was wonderful writing these blog posts and doing snap-research through ILL and eventually letting my constraints and abilities direct me into the best assignment I could’ve chosen, and I even feel a kind of wistfulness for the act of hand-setting all of the margins in my script, but I’m finally setting out into the world-proper, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

Putting that aside, at least for now, I think this project was a pretty big success. I came in without huge expectations, and what I’ve left with isn’t flashy or overly exciting, but I got everything taken care of in the time provided, and I did it without too much help and in spite of my other responsibilities. I’m proud of my script for the work I had to put into it, the work I hope this blog’s been a good testament to. And whatever I wind up doing, I think I’ll be okay.

Cultural Attendance 5: The Latest Night in the Zone

This was the final event out of all the ones I’d fought to attend, after my panic at the idea of not making it to five total, and it was also the least eventful. The “Rampages” only got more subdued as time went on, or maybe it was just too cold for people to make the trip, or maybe the semester was just winding down. I’m surprised we haven’t had any snow by now.

But besides the music, it was mostly quiet conversation between small groups of friends. The woman at the door gave me one of those wristbands they always do (the kind that only come off with extreme force), and I had to explain to her that I was signing in to create some evidence that I’d come. I’m not sure how I expected to find that evidence later, but it made sense to me in the moment.

The last time I went to a Rampage, everyone had been grabbing Halloween candy early, and I’d shown up to vulture-peck over the remainder before I left. This time, there wasn’t very much to speak of, and although they were handing out desserts to everyone by the end of the night I showed up barely too late to get any. When I was finally about to leave, shortly before the Den closed up, I grabbed a little paper bowl, poured it full of M&Ms, put some tinfoil over it and cradled it like a secret parcel on my way out.

I stopped for a moment, actually, to witness the final moment of the final Late Night of my school career. Everyone gathered around in dress-up material around a big camera and had their picture taken, even the woman who’d sworn me onto the premises. They were all dressed in jokey political stuff, oversized buttons and red-and-blue Dr. Seuss hats, and they said something nice about Late Night instead of “cheese!” They assembled before I could join, and I was worried about setting my new treasure down and having to eat a real dinner at least as much as I was worried about intruding into a moment between all the organizers, so I smiled and waited for them to disperse. Turns out the camera would’ve put all of the pictures on a website anyway, so I’m glad I was tempted to stand away from it.

It was cold when I left. It had long since stopped being pleasant to take an evening hike back to my apartment, but the breeze wasn’t biting yet. I put the M&Ms on a little shelf between my couch and my kitchen, and I felt an odd sense of accomplishment at surviving and meeting all my requirements. I almost wish I had a picture of it to put up here.

Cultural Attendance 4: Film Festival

This was one the whole town rolled out the red carpet for, and I was a little shocked to see how much of the off-campus community came to see it. I put off some work to make it during the weekend, and I had to squeeze myself past six people to find one of the only empty seats in the theater. The next-oldest person in the room must’ve had ten years on me at least, and I tried not to be a nuisance or write notes too loudly.

I’d made it to one of the more broken-up showings of short films, reasoning that there were better odds of my enjoying them than an all-or-nothing feature. I think it was the right decision, too, because the short timespan kept everything informative and beautiful without allowing for any dragging. The films I saw covered a lot of ground and a lot of causes, including bird migrations, dams that need to be opened, using genetics to reinvigorate the redwood tree, and undetonated mines with coral reefs growing over them.

I have to wonder if the other people there had just come so they could be told about how many problems there are with the environment, and how many donated to any of the filmmakers (every one of them was asking for money, because the festival was about raising awareness of problems more than celebrating nature). I remember them all as being townies, because they looked older and relatively affluent, but I know some of them must have come a ways to see the festival. It feels weird to think that my homestead gets chosen as a host for these sorts of events.

The best part of the afternoon, though, was the movie about cicadas, which had no experts, no voiceovers, and not too much information about them except for some text about their life cycles. It was completely beautiful, the kind of thing I might’ve expected to see on the Discovery channel when I was a kid, and full of swarms of bugs which would’ve looked completely disgusting otherwise. I never realized before then that cicadas don’t have any survival mechanisms beyond their sheer numbers, or how their metamorphoses can go wrong, or how their offspring get back beneath the ground. (When I was a kid, I assumed they were just sleeping and came up for air every seventeen years.)  

On the whole, it was a pretty cramped affair, but it offered a wider view of the world, and I always appreciate that. I didn’t know what to expect when I went in, but I know now that the people most invested in protecting and preserving nature are also the people who most appreciate its beauty, and I’m all for handing them film cameras more often.

Cultural Attendance 3: A Later Night in the Zone

One of the defining factors of “Rampages” is that they didn’t seem to take place in the bowling-alley pool-table section of the Rams’ Den. I don’t blame them for that, really. I can’t remember the last time I went there, even though it was such a selling point in that first tour of the buildings so long, long ago. I mean, what college student needs a pass to go bowling every week?

Then again, there’s never been much partying around here outside of the outskirt quarantine of the Town Run. That’s one of the things I do regret about choosing this place over something bigger. A party school might’ve made me miserable, but at least it would’ve been more hedonistic about it. Ending my teenaged years by being all contemplative strikes me now as a massively wasted opportunity.

That night was interesting to me because it was the first time I’d seen performers in the cafeteria section of Ram’s Den and not the ballroom, and I’d been expecting the same party music and strobelights as always. (The fact that they were giving out spaghetti and not nachos should’ve also set the mood.) And on the whole, they were both decent. I sat at the nearest open seat, and the other people at the table didn’t pay much mind to me, and I laughed when I felt it was earned and played with the garlic bread for the rest of the time.

Really, the hypnotist was the flashier part of the two, and he’d delayed coming on for some reason, maybe nerves. When he did, he used the same techniques as last year’s mind-controller, but got a wider audience reaction. I should mention I’ve done some research into hypnosis-culture, and I’ve decided stage-hypnotism doesn’t work (or seem to work) very well unless you get the audience extremely into it. Making a fool of people is one way to excite a crowd, but if you’re going to target a bunch of university kids the best path is sexuality - provocative dancing, a tame form of exhibitionism, a suggestion of power over the wants and likes of others, etc.

(Even the most preliminary look at hypnosis’ enthusiasts makes it obvious that fetishism goes hand-in-hand with it. And judging by the art in these communities, the technicolor snake-eyes of The Jungle Book VHS have affected a truly disturbing number of psyches.)

In the midst of all of it, one of the girls called up as entertainment for being so well-hypnotized was sent out with the rest to protect audience-members, and she sat down with her arms around me. At the speaker’s command she said something nice about me (I don’t remember what, only that it took her a minute and wasn’t very convincing), and then we pretended to be on a rollercoaster together before she departed to go do something else. I’m sure she developed a kind of half-fame from the rest of the performance, even if it only extended to the rest of that night. It takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there even with mind-control for an excuse, unless you really are that susceptible.

Cultural Attendance 2: Suicide Squad

Isn’t it strange how the college zeitgeist seems to pick a favorite movie around once a semester? A little while back it was Toy Story 3, two semesters ago I think it was possibly Pitch Perfect 2, and in my final days as a Junior it was very clearly Deadpool. However quickly the fashions change it’s very nice of the Program Board to pull out the projectors every so often and play a couple DVDs of the recent hits. I still remember lugging my sleeping bag to the giant empty square of grass by the Ram’s Den and sitting on the outskirts of the assembled to watch the Next Big Thing. 

This year, though, they put it in the Storer Ballroom, and it was Suicide Squad, the movie that echoed in the dozens of Harley Quinns that came to my door on Halloween. I made to the Den through the cold after putting off a movie night with my friends, and felt a little disappointed about not bringing any snacks when I learned they didn’t have any popcorn. It was a pretty packed affair, though, and I had to insinuate myself into the middle of a row in order to see anything. The movie itself was... well, actually okay.

I don’t have a great relationship with superhero movies, or with superhero anything. I’d say they’re just not my speed, but that’s not really true - I love stories like All-Star Superman, J.G. McCrae’s Worm and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, the thoughtful kind that uses imagination and far-out ideas to showcase the triumph of the human spirit. Because of that, the average superhero story always feels more to me like a soap opera or a WWE match than a piece of wondrous fantasy, the kind of thing people watch to see Robert Downey Jr. punch nondescript evil minions, instead of something they go to for an intellectual challenge.

So after seeing Thor, and then Age of Ultron to confirm that I wasn’t being unfair, I just gave up on the genre. And when I was drawn in by the promise of a passing grade for my Capstone, I was surprised to find that Suicide Squad wasn’t that bad. The story’s a little confused about its own progression, the reveals are pretty tacky and it has the same problems with credible threats as every other popular superhero teamup in history, but it was really strongly edited, the characters were introduced very well given the time constraints, the effects were lovely and there was even some good humor.

You know, ever since I was in high school, I wanted to run a movie theater. Or just work in one. Maybe a small one, like the opera-house a block down from my apartment, or an arthouse place by the beach somewhere, or maybe something bigger and more exciting where homeless people would come to sleep at night. They all have a special atmosphere to them that I’ve always found really heady, and from childhood it’s driven my appreciation for film further than many other media. Video games are what you do when you’re bored, books are what you do when teachers keep talking about things you already know, television is what you do when you just get home, but movies are what you actively go out to experience, in their own little popcorn-microcosm.

So even if the movies aren’t always the best, I have to say I’ve appreciated the chance to experience that in a town where the theater’s mostly for concert performances.

Cultural Attendance: A Late Night in the Zone

For some reason I thought I’d have to just collect tokens of going to these events and then bring them with me to some post-showing meeting to exchange for a grade. I still have the torn-up wristbands and promotional fliers, but I only recently realized that the writing was the important thing.

I remember, and it now feels pretty distant as I stand poised to jump into the world-at-large, that I was frustrated by how few of these events I could get to. My school schedule, my newfound apartment and my twenty hours of frycook duty were all constantly conspiring to keep me out anything interesting, especially really cool stuff like the New York trip. So these aren’t the most exciting uses of my time, but my time was on a very strict budget, and they’re the best I could manage.

The first was a Late Night in the Zone, although they’ve started calling them “Rampages” this year, and it was during a bingo game. My roommate and I crashed it to get some protein - Chick-fil-A was catering - and watch the proceedings. It was pretty straightforward as Bingo went, although they had some of those exotic challenges that always impressed me with how much fun they could wring out of a grid of randomized numbers. I’m not sure I stuck around long enough to see people win any of the really huge prizes, but I think somebody got a basket full of popcorn and DVDs.

At one point, a young, lost-looking teenager in an Undertale shirt hovered around me and my companion. I still remember him, although I never saw him again. I think he wanted to approach us, but he didn’t know how.

And to be honest, the part of the whole night I remember most is when I was about to leave and I came across a Freshman who was looking to make friends with people. He seemed like the sort of person you’d find hanging out in a comic shop, and he complained that when his dad came to visit earlier that day they’d run out of space in his minifridge for the leftover pizza. I felt an impulse, then, to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and impart all of my knowledge, to reveal that no, really, I know I might look like I just got out of high school but I’m a Senior and you should heed my advice, but I just nodded, and left feeling old.

He’s finishing his first semester now, which probably taught him most of what I was going to say anyway. Let the young come of age on their own time.