RIP JAWS
“And we gotta do it quick, that’ll bring back your tourists, put all your businesses on a payin’ basis.”
- Quint
I’m saddened to hear the Jaws ride is closing at Universal Studios in Orlando, it being my favorite movie. I was lucky enough to experience it once, though I was maybe 12 or 13 years old and don’t have as solid a memory of it as I’d like. I wish I had more than a month’s notice, especially that month being December. However, I understand the reasoning behind it. They Harry Potter thing, the Marvel thing. Jaws is outdated. Hell it was probably already 15 to 20 years old when I placed it in the top tier of my favorite movie list - a position that brings with it many benefits: watching it from any point when it’s on television, even especially the last 15 minutes, anniversary edition DVDs with extensive amounts of useless trivia (the mechanical shark was named Bruce, after Steven Spielberg’s lawyer), and since you know all the lines, it makes for a great napping soundtrack.
But, I digress. Universal is promising “an exciting, NEW experience” presumably themed around another pop culture zeitgeist a la the Potter universe. (Please don’t let it be Twilight). My proposal - a Star Wars ‘land’. Consider how timeless the movies are, appealing to multiple generations. You could buy refreshments at a recreated Mos Eisley cantina, explore that crazy tree in Yoda’s swamp and your face could appear in Vader’s helmet, even have some ‘little people’ walking around dressed as Ewoks and Jawas. The first thing you see through the turnstiles? A model of the Death Star the size of the Epcot ball with a ride inside that takes you through the history of the Empire.
3 out of 4
number of my friends that could not explain what an adjective is
As someone who knows next to nothing about technology…
Why does the voice for Siri sound exactly like the same awkward, choppy,first version of the voice for every other technological talking voice thing down the line? Why don’t they just use the best one available that all the technological talking voice things use right now that sound like real people, like GPS or most kids’ toys?
Why the Novel Still Matters
There are two big arguments for why the novel, as we know it, is dying.
1) People are spending less time with fiction, and with books. We’re opting for small bites, like blog posts, and socially-recommended reading.
2) Linear written stories are being downplayed thanks to new technology that creates interactive, multimedia-aided storytelling.
But those things don’t matter. Yes, we are on the Internet more than we read books. Yes, people are trying all kinds of cute iBook gimmicks. But the straight-forward, no frills novel is still one of the most powerful objects out there.
Novels have the power to make us do all kinds of things. Take a road trip. Try cocaine. Listen to The Smiths. Study Jungian archetypes.
They help us understand things we would never otherwise think about. Why little kids might go mute. Why a man might kill a bunch of people.
Most importantly, they’re escapism. We can get away from the world and pretend we are someone else for awhile, while laying around in our underwear in our beds.
Unlike movies, novels are easy for anyone to create. You just need words, and the reader’s mind does the set production.
As a writer, I still don’t think I’ll be satisfied with myself until I write a novel. To me, it’s the touchstone of a writing career, and the point when you start to be taken seriously.
Even though writing a bestselling novel might not make you as rich as it used to, the glamor is still there. The publishing houses just need to not give up hope (or require as much money).
flux capacitor in my beer
