12 Days

Not long after we arrived in Iowa City, a friend of mine sent me a Slate article  about a new book that collected the letters Kurt Vonnegut wrote during his life. The article featured one letter in particular written to Richard Gehman, who at the time was a graduate student in need of advice. The acerbic missive explained what to expect in Iowa City and the university.

 

This email came at the perfect time for us. Bo and I had arrived in the dead of Iowa’s winter and the view out every window was a bleak snow scape so different from what we could see in the Pacific Northwest. The shift in location and the low moral left me questioning my decision to leave a lucrative job and go back to school. Vonnegut’s advice about the city itself was the leverage we needed, a treasure map, that took us out of the house and into Donnelly’s Pub; which was just the start. Not long after classmates shared tips about Hamburg Inn and Blue Bird Cafe. Bo found a community-rowing club who pointed us toward the Amana Colonies. Later, I shambled into Zombie Burger in Des Moines with my robot theatre class.

 

It wasn’t just food either: we took part in a number of activities that we missed in Portland. I found some great game stores like Hobby Corner and Critical Hit. Riverside, Iowa, the future birthplace of Captain Kirk and home of Trek Fest, is just down the Highway. Bo and I both reconnected with outdoor activities like biking and rowing which brought great friends like Casey Westlake and Karen Clark into our lives. Through my classwork I met great people, who I hope to work with in the future like Denise Szecsei, Lisa Schlesinger, Peter Balestrieri, and Joshua Wheeler.

 

Our adventures also took us outside of Iowa City. We have traveled extensively in the past two and half years with trips to Cedar Rapids, Chicago, Cincinnati, Des Moines, Kansas City, Sioux City, and San Francisco, Seattle, Wahoo, and oh so briefly back to Portland. Some of these trips were get-aways designed to restore sanity, as Vonnegut suggested. Others were flights of fancy or research expeditions. Some of these trips were places, that due to proximity, expense, or size, we wouldn’t have traveled to otherwise. All of them were worthwhile.

 

We have spent the last two and half years living as local tourists, trying to absorb as much of the Iowa-ness as we could. Yet, each sentence in this post only skips along the surface of our memories here, a link in a larger, deeper web of associations and memories. There is just so much experience that sits in the white space between these words. It may be easier to say, we both fell in love with this place and now that we only have another twelve days left we find ourselves a little sad to be leaving.

We didn’t do everything Vonnegut suggested. I didn’t “run with the painters,” although I wish I had. There is some amazing work to be found in Art Building West that I didn’t encounter until my last couple of weeks here. We also avoided the football games like the plague, instead we became fans of the Cedar Rapids Kernals, a Class A feeder team for the Minnesota Twins . We also didn’t visit the Lark, a Tiffin steak house that Vonnegut recommended, but had burned down by the time we arrived.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Leave some of the mystery. Something to see when we come back.  

 

Stick Shifts and Safety Belts: The trials and tribulations of a new manual transmission driver who grew up in an automatic world

                “Damn it.”

                Our new Aegean metallic blue Honda Fit lurches and dies in an empty parking lot on the edge of Iowa City. The early Sunday morning rain drums down the windshield in long loopy rivulets as I grind my teeth in frustration. I drop the stick back into neutral and giving it a shake to make sure it’s in the right place and unclenching my jaw with a heavy sigh I push the red button on the dash, re-starting the engine. This is day two of my manual transmission training and today’s lesson is not going well. My wife and driving instructor, Boann, has spent the last hour instructing me in an exercise I call “Starts and Stops.” This lesson is designed to teach me how to find the clutch point, a magical place where the car has enough gas and the gears are in the right place to catch, pushing the car into motion. So far I have only found it smoothly a couple of times.

“Deep breath. You’re doing fine.” Bo says gently placing her hand on mine.

                Rubbing the growing bruise under the safety belt, I shake my head and try again.

                The purchase of a new car was a necessity. Our previous car, a 2003 The Suzuki Aero that we had called Bubba Sue, had come down with a bad case of transmission grind. Bubba, also a bizarrely named shade of blue, had been a valued companion that had taken us through two cross-country moves, numerous smaller excursions, and countless activities that litter the medians of life. The grind wasn’t a surprise, but my wife and I had hoped that Bubba Sue would survive one more cross-country trip between Iowa and Portland, Oregon before being put out to pasture. We had hoped we could get away with not having a car, since Portland has a really good inexpensive mass-transit system.

The only sticking point that we went back and forth on was whether or not to go manual or automatic. I never learned how to drive manual. This wasn’t due to my driving skill or preference, and more about availability; when I learned to drive all we had were automatics. Boann’s training on the other hand had been just the opposite.

Over the years I had heard from a number of different drivers, my wife included, about the benefits offered by manual transmission like better fuel economy, greater speed control, lower price, and cheaper maintenance. While many of them were true at one point in the past, most of these factoids are no longer true. Many automatic transmission cars get better or equivalent mileage, for example the 2014 Ford Focus six-speed automatic economy car gets a combined 33 MPG while the equivalent manual model gets 31. The same for price, many of the cars we looked at had comparable prices for either option. We only saved $800 by getting a manual, a savings that was washed away in financing fees, taxes, and licensing. Other than in Europe, manual transmission sales have steadily fallen across all manufactures. Only 3.9% of cars sold in the 2013 sales year were manual transmissions. Many vehicle fleets like cabs, police cars, and the Military Humvee are all automatic now.

So why the loyal attachment from so many drivers? The one consistent argument that I heard from most sources really came down to greater control over the engine itself, which at first didn’t make sense to me. Shifting seemed like the perfect task to turn over to a computer. What I figured out as I learned the delicate dance between clutch, shifter, and gas wasn’t so much greater control over the engine as it was having an extra check when it came to speed control. Each gear only has a specific range of speed where the engine will operate efficiently. Stomping on the gas in the wrong gear will only serve to rev the engine and waste gas with little gain in speed. It might also damage the engine. It does beg the question though, are you controlling the engine or is it controlling the driver through sound and vibration.

I also frequently hear, “it’s just more fun to drive.” At this stage the only feeling I am finding is a sense of joy when I don’t have to scramble to restart when I stall the engine. A feeling I think is more akin to relief then fun or joy. I like to go driving. I like the long deep conversations Bo and I have on the open road. There is something about the transitional nature of a trip and the secluded-ness of the car that allows for a level of conversation that we don’t normally have when others are around or in other modes of transport like a train or airplane. Even the topics stray far outside the norm, the shifting nature allowing a space for topics that we would never consider saying elsewhere. I have even found myself occasionally saving topics for road trips. Every trip brings us a little closer. I wonder if that is why I keep moving the two of us cross-country every chance I get. Yet the actual act of driving, that’s just the bread, the literal vehicle, that transports us to this place where we can achieve this conversational state. The less distracting it is the better.

We purchased the Fit the day before from Randy Kuehl’s Honda, a tiny lot in Cedar Rapids Iowa tucked between a hotel and baby supply story. The triangled lot sparkled with new and used cars in a variety of shapes and colors in the beautiful spring morning. We had spent the last month test-driving different cars and dealers looking for the right mix of dealer service, price, and vehicle specifications before unlocking the right combination at this location. What I didn’t realize was that all of our research meant walking into this dealership was a bit of Fait Acompli.

We had intended to give Bo the opportunity to test-drive one of the two manual Fits they had in stock. Just like the layout of a car’s cabin, sightlines, or even the feel of a vehicles drive, each manual transmission is a little different and Bo wanted to make sure that this model was something that she could teach on. Her concerns weren’t unfounded, the angle or length of the stick, the clutch point, and peddle height can all have an effect on complexity of a car’s drive, and influence someone’s ability to teach or to learn.

This was the only car that I couldn’t test drive, so as we pulled out of the lot I was busy looking in hatches, pushing buttons, opening the moon roof and windows and not paying attention to Bo. When I did look up, the big goofy grin smeared across her face as she shifted smoothly between gears in the short drive to the highway exit told me this would be the car that would carry us through the next decade of our lives. She looked so happy and I wouldn’t be the one to stand in the way of that happiness even if it meant having to learning a process that heretofore I had thought had dubious benefits.

It took most of the morning to fill out and sign all the necessary paperwork before we could drive off the lot. Several hours that were mostly wait as forms was processed, phone calls made to banks and insurance carriers, and the new car was detailed. I also took the opportunity to clear out the remaining dandruff from Bubba Sue. A process that in the moment was surprisingly emotional. I couldn’t help but wipe away tears as I dumped the contents of the glove box and trunk into a box. It was the first real purchase I made as an adult, a physical symbol that represented the all the labor it took to pay it off, and it was difficult to see it go. Bubba Sue had been in my life just a little longer then my wife, and some of Bo and I’s earliest memories could be found in the grit stuck between the seat cushions or in the dings and scratches on the panels. Even reading this out loud several weeks distant still makes my eyes water and my throat constrict.

I learned to drive on an 80’s era Toyota Corolla that started life as yellow as a banana but by the time I got behind the wheel it had faded to almost white. Through a quirk of timing, I was eligible to get my learners permit before I was able to enroll in the Driver’s Education class in high school, so most of my training was done on rural routes and dusty back roads outside of Kansas City, Kansas. To this day I can still hear my mother say, “hugging the right!” when I drift too close to a rumble strip or I get a horn blast from the next lane. It was a long hot summer in a car whose air conditioning only served to make the vehicle more humid. By the end of a training session the car turned into a damp pressure vessel that shortened attention spans and tempers. I have a feeling I was lucky I wasn’t left on the side of the road on several occasions.

Many of the memories from that time period have faded so I don’t remember how long it took me to learn how to drive, but I do remember taking that car out for an unsanctioned, and highly illegal, sojourn to a party before I had actually gotten my license. My parents had other activities planned and didn’t want to take or pick me up. Permit in hand, I convinced myself that I could drive there on my own despite needing an adult with me when I was behind the wheel. The white-knuckled drive across town left me too exhausted and nauseous to do anything at the party and I left not long after arriving, convinced that the police were waiting around the corner ready to haul me away for GTA. Not long after though, I passed my driving test on the first try and I felt the first wisps of freedom passed over me. 

“Almost there, but next time come up slowly from the clutch and give it gas at the same time.”

“But I thought you said, all the way on or off with the clutch.”

“Yes, if you’re changing at higher gears. This is getting into first.”

It’s about a week later and we are training again. In the intervening time period I have realized something; I’m an asshole driver.

I don’t mean that I tailgate, speed, rapidly change lanes, or drive in other driver’s blind spots all while waving my middle finger around like a digital whip. I mean to say I used to get very irritated with people who wouldn’t be ready to go the instant the light turned green. I was the kind of person that would lift my foot off the brake and count the seconds it took for traffic to start moving around me. The wait was a timed scale that I used to measure the intelligence or attention span of the drivers around me as. I was always diligent to make sure that when I was the first car at the light I was always paying attention so that I wouldn’t make the people behind me late for whatever adventures they had planned. I considered it a courtesy. Anyone who couldn’t do this was a jerk in my eyes. A message I futilely communicate to the inside of my car by yelling out, “Quit playing with your phone!” or “Pay attention!” usually adding a rotating combination of swearwords that always left Bo embarrassed if the windows were rolled down.

Now that I am learning this process I realize how big of an ass I have been. Even if you are an experienced driver used to shifting out of a dead stop and into traffic it still takes a second or two to get into gear and moving. Now that I am the one who is taking a moment to get off the line, I am grateful to other drivers who are patient with me as I stall and sputter at a light. I am getting better. The exercises that Bo has been teaching me have worked and I now only stall at every fourth light or stop sign and as I drive more even those will go away.

In Bubba Sue I was definitely the Primary Driver, now that we have Stormy (Short for Stormeggedon, Dark Lord of All) that has shifted. Bo is definitely the new Primary Driver but that is more an artifact of me still not being fully confident yet. I don’t think it will fully shift back but I hope it will equalize. In the mean time I spend my time in the car doing something that I rarely had the opportunity to do, be a passenger. I have noticed a whole slate of businesses, parks, attractions and other details that I missed because they were literally out of view or because my main focus was on the road. It makes me sad to think of all of the wonderful things I have missed while ensconced in the driver’s seat; things that I might now have the opportunity to see now that I can drive manual.  

I can’t say that learning to drive stick will make me a better driver, nor do I think you will ever convince me that it’s better method overall. I still have all the old habits like hugging the right that I had when we got started, now I have an added process that will take some adjustment time. I will agree that it has made me a more patient and rounded driver. Which is a step in the right direction. At some point I might even find it a little fun. We’ll see. 

I do still yell at people who are slow to enter the intersection, but only if they are messing with their phones.

Fuck those guys.

A Call for Votes!

As many of you know, for the past year I have been writing and directing scenes for NAO robots. These classes have been a co-endeavor with the Theatre and Computer Science Departments at the University of Iowa. At the same time my professor, Denise Szecsei , has been taking the robots on the road and into elementary, middle, and high school class rooms to expose students to the cool things that computer science and engineering can do.  I had the distinct pleasure of seeing these robots in action as students as young as six were taught how to program the robots to walk and talk.  

This summer Denise is taking the project one step further and she needs your help. Denise is putting together several summer camps where students and girls in particular, can work directly with the robots to write their own code and develop their own content. She is planning on three camps in three different states; Minneapolis, MN, Santa Cruz, CA and Portland, OR. Programs like this are expensive to operate and Denise has applied for Chase Bank Main Street grant.  You can learn more about the Chase program here. The way the program works is that grantees need 250 votes to be put into the running for a one hundred thousand dollar grant.  At this point the campaign needs an additional 200 votes. Time is short though; the window to vote will close soon. 

In addition to the cost of putting on the camp, Denise will use the funds to buy an additional robot and the hardware needed to work with it. The extra robot and equipment will help her include more students in the program. You can help by going to ModnaR Enterprises and clicking on the vote now button. (You will need to log into Facebook in order to vote)

All votes are appreciated.

Additional information:
You can find additional information about the NAO robots on their website 

Information about Denise, the robots, and the programs as well as other links can be found on the university of Iowa Computer science Department website. 

 

Fall has come

The crisp night air of the first cold night in Iowa is bracing as I step off the humid Cambus and a lungful of the stuff hisses through my teeth and pours into my chest. It has been overcast and gloomy all day and the creeping night is only the day’s photo negative.

Summer is over. As I walk up the hill towards home I realize that I don’t care. It’s a full three weeks in to this new semester and I don’t think I could be happier. This summer was productive but the new classes are a welcomed change of pace. The rushing around, the new stresses, and the adjustments in eating schedules are a sigh of relief in a season that had grown heavy with routine. 

Tonight I am in a particular good mood.  In addition to coming off a successful week where I felt like everything went well, I also witnessed the first nascent conversations between Denise and Christopher, two of the posse of five NAO robots that we are using in the Robot Theatre class. Up till now we have been doing monologues or pre-creating gestures for a library. The process is involved and laborious but rewarding. We act out both parts of the scene, taking suggestions for refinement or improvements from the class and I can’t help but be reminded of the video that I have seen of Pixar animators doing the same thing for their peers. Tonight through the efforts of the entire class, we combined gestures and dialogue and the results are small, but good and forecast what is to come.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUcQ8n29uQA&list=UUdzlWmmWe- 

(sorry about the directly embedded link. Its a private video but the link will get you there.)

In the coming weeks these robots will stand and move to tell the story more effectively. The voices will be sculpted to add emotion. Later scenes will involve humans and robot interactions. Finally we will add an audience.  

I will post more soon as we get things into a completed state.  

What I found disturbing about Transformers 4: Age of Extinction

This week I saw Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth installment in the blockbuster live action remake of the animated TV show. It was exactly what I expected from Michael Bay: loud pretty explosions, staged tableaux with uplifting music, the suspension of the laws of physics, incoherent story lines, and the destruction of one or more major cities somewhere in the world. I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to see it and was happy to support a film whose proceeds end up funding smaller Hollywood projects.

There are some minor spoilers ahead that won’t ruin what little plot there is, but will be glaring once they are pointed out.

The movie fell apart for me during a short scene somewhere near the beginning of this meandering film involving Cade Yeager played by Mark Wahlberg, Tessa Yeager played by Nicola Peltz, and Shane Dyson played by Jack Reynor. This scene takes place after an extended chase scene where the Yeagers and Shane have just escaped from Cemetery Wind, a clandestine organization that is hunting Transformers. For the moment the trio has taken refuge in an abandoned building and Cade is angry about the recently revealed secret relationship between his daughter and Shane. The whole situation gets weirder when Cade finds out that Shane is twenty while Tessa is seventeen. Cade then threatens to report Shane to the police (after just being chased by a clandestine US government agency bent on capturing him for harboring a Transformer). Cade responds by pulling out a laminated copy of the Texas Romeo and Juliette law, complete with statue number, out of his wallet.

What I found creepy about the whole thing was not the relationship (that I found to be pretty normal), but the forethought it took for Shane to track down that particular law, copy it, print it, laminate it, and then store it in his wallet. The detail plays into his character; at best Shane is really in love with Tessa and is ready for the awkward conversation with her father or at worst he is a predator using the gaps in the law to take advantage of her. I think it may be the former since Jack spends most of the movie either being an obnoxious adolescent or a coward. It begs the question though: who else was that prop prepared for? Regardless of Shane’s flawed intentions, in real life a faceless government agency would be the least of the little bastard’s problems when he pulls a prop like that out and waves it in a father’s face.

It’s a tasteless moment in a movie that was just under three hours long. A moment one that could have been cut to make room to explain what happens to Darcy Tirrel, played by Sophia Myles, who gets  Mandyed after telling Stanley Tucci’s character “You go with her, I will create a diversion.” (which we never see). Initially Darcy was set up to be the love interest for the Joshua Joyces character, but that falls apart after they go to China and  meet Su Yueming, played by Bingbing li.

Finally I think the majority of the population that inhabits this version of Earth have been lobotomized. While the Transformers are cavorting through Chicago and Beijing destroying everything they come in contact with, much of the population are behaving as if nothing is happing. For example we come across a family calmly watching TV in their apartment when Mark Whalberg and Titus Welliver breaking in to have fist fight while several Transformers have a gun battle outside. You can ask the same questions about the commuters in Chicago who are going about their lives despite the thirty foot robots shooting at each other on Lake Shore Drive and a massive spaceship floating overhead. Everyone only seems to evacuate or panic when they comes into direct contact with the robots. Then again, this is the fourth installment of the franchise and it’s possible the films unwashed masses are as unimpressed by the sudden appearance of Transformers as ours. 

I’m Back!

As many of you may know I have been traveling as of late which is why I have had a regular posting. I am working on some new posts but to tide you over I wanted to share this beautiful video that I saw recently. Enjoy!

The heavy baggage of Maleficent

Warning: Spoilers

Bo and I recently saw Maleficent at our local cineplex. This new live action version switches the focus of the tale away from the plight of princess Auruora and points it at the title character played by Angelina Jolie. It was fun and I do think it is worthwhile to see it.

Prior to seeing Maleficent the film I was a little ambivalent about the original Sleeping Beauty, and the character of Maleficent. I hadn’t seen Sleeping Beauty (or much of the Disney catalogue for that matter) up until a few years ago and subsequently didn’t grow up with the evil specter of Maleficent. I instead grew up on a steady diet of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Transformers. This also means that I didn’t have the same emotional connection to the evil queen that others have. In fact I had to re-watch the original Disney film to reacquaint myself with the basic premise, which is part of the reason this review is coming nearly two weeks after the release date. Ultimately, I think this emotional baggage from Sleeping Beauty is the films major downfall.

Maleficent is a reboot of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty told from the point of view of the title character creating a rich origin story for the infamous sorcerer queen. In this version the child fairy Maleficent is the most powerful fairy of a magic kingdom, called the Moors, that boarders an industrious human one. The two kingdoms have been at war in the past but currently are in a period of uneasy peace. The story starts with Maleficent as young child doing what children do; flinging mud, playing practical jokes, and having fun until a young human boy, Stephan, breaches the boarder. Despite the past tensions the human and the fairy become fast friends.

As the two grow up and eventually grow apart Stephan goes to the city and becomes a powerful member of the king’s court while Maleficent just grows more powerful. In a large set piece of the story the humans attack the Moors and are roundly defeated by the fairies who deploy large evil looking tree people riding elephant sized boars, a rock dragon, and Maleficent herself. It’s during this attack that the king is fatally injured. The king decrees that whoever brings him the head of Maleficent can marry his daughter. Stephan takes advantage of the situation and goes to Maleficent.

Stephan, played in this version by Sharlto Copley, uses the love that the two share as a way to get close to Maleficent. Stephan drugs Maleficent then attempts to kill her on the border between the two kingdoms. Stephan is unable to commit murder and instead cuts off Maleficent’s wings which he then presents to the king.

It’s at this point that the narratives of Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent briefly come together. The baby is born, the curse is cast, Aurora is sent into exile and the kingdom falls into turmoil. Aurora’s coming of age is also told from Maleficent’s point of view. We watch Maleficent observe the young Arora as she grows up. As Aurora grows Maleficent falls in love with the child from afar and begins to regret her rash actions. In the end Maleficent spends the rest of the film trying to undo the curse any way that she can.

In reading some of the criticism that has come out about this movie I think most of the audience was expecting to see a movie that would depict a Maleficent as she was the original movie, a one sided avatar of evil. Think House of Cards’ Frank Underwood or the Dark Knights’ Joker but with magic and the ability to shape change, but instead they ended up with a character that is as human and flawed as The West Wings’ Jed Bartlet.

As I have said, I didn’t have any expectations one way or the other. So I didn’t approach this movie with the hopes that I think many of this films audiences have seen it with; an origin story for evil rooted in their childhood imaginations. Instead I saw it for what it was; the retelling of a fairy tale. One in a long tradition of retellings designed to ease the fears of a particular transition or outline the warnings of a particular social issues of the day.

This isn’t unheard of. Disney’s Sleeping Beauty heavily borrows elements from the German Dornröschen and the French La Belle au bois Dormant to tell its tale. Additionally both the French and German stories are based on an even older Italian story called Sole, Luna, e Talia.  

Where I think this new tale is held back is by the original Disney movie. Maleficent is at its best when it is telling its own story and at it’s weakest when retelling the exposition from the orginal tale. Yet the plot is forced to haul the baggage of the animated film (and its audience) around much like Prince Phillip is magically hauled around by Maleficent in the third act; as an expected part of the story. I wonder what this film would have been like had it dumped the animated baggage, Phillip included, and forged its own path.

I think Maleficent is still worth seeing for the moments when it’s not carrying that baggage.  The back strory on Stephan, the new ending, as well as the details on how the curse is broken are all worthy and interesting takes on an old story that needed updating.

I did enjoy the film and I encourage others to see it too, but don’t go to see the Maleficent of Sleeping Beauty, after all she is a much different character.  Go to see it for a growing myth of a new and different Maleficent. 

Let me know what you think.