I believed I knew who I was and that knowledge gave me strength of purpose.
This is what I am doing and even if onlookers were uncertain as to the why I was aware of it.
Because I knew myself.
But as I age I worry that I change and that certainty is failing.
I know the man of 10 years ago but do I know as well the man of now.
The man of 10 years ago was a man of the future. Always rushing for tomorrow.
But more and more I find events rushing towards me and not the other way around.
When I find myself in that place, without my usual slow deliberation it is much harder to discover the why.
Because my actions are more immediate it is harder to understand that those actions are still of me.
They are the culmination of actions and choices I may have made months maybe even years ago.
It is harder and harder to think of those choices as being made by this man rather the man of yesterday who at one point I intimately understood.
Instead the events careening towards me are due promises, dreams of the abstract, that man made unto himself and I wonder if the man of today who must work to keep those promises would have made them in the first place.
In English: I went to the bank and did some stuff to start turning this blog into more of a business and it's kind of freaking me out a little. But at least it means in a month or so there should be some cool stuff in the pipe like election and Youmacon coverage and I might even be able to get a camera for it and other ideas. So yay, and oh my god what happens if this all crumbles.
Now I kind of want to talk about A Goofy Movie one of the most underated Disney movies out there, but before I can I need to talk about.
Okay so in the 90's Disney tried to repurpose a lot of it's old I.P.s for TV. Mostly this meant a lot of ______ the animated shows.
But oftentimes especially with older I.P.s they went weird. Like The Jungle Book re-imagined as a 1920's flying pulp.
Goofy's version of this was a show that imagined him as a single dad trying to raise his Son, Max, in suburbia with Pegleg Pete as an obnoxious next door neighbor.
But something wierd happened. While a lot shows had a kid character Max, as well as his best friend Pete Jr. began to take over more and more of the show where it got to the point where they were the show. It eventually become more of a kid com about Max and P.J.'s preteen social awkwardness than an update to the modern slapstick of the old shorts.
Not that it wasn't there. The show was great at satirizing suburban life in same vein as the Jetsons and the Flintsons
But here is the rub. When it comes to older I.P. the mouse has never really been good at using it. That's more or less how Maleficent, Cinderella and even Once Upon a Time happened. Disney trying to figure out a way to actually do something it's older properties rather than just coasting off merch and theme parks.
It's on my list.
Goof Troop was a decently popular show in its time and had made Goofy, Goofy of all characters cool again. But all things must end and the show was canceled after a respectable 78 episodes. Thing about a lot of animated hits of my childhood is they just refuse to die.
And Goof Troop got a last hurrah as a theatrical release Serenity style.
Here is the thing. Being both a fan of the show and the movie I have to applaud the choices they made in the show. Rather than it being an extended episode like most of these types of these movies the show, by a everybody up a few years the movie became about something bigger than the slap stick antics.
Due to some act one shenanigans the elder Goof thinks his kid is becoming delinquent and though well meaning drags him on the road trip from hell rather than doing the smart thing and just talking to the guy to see what's up.
For Max's part he makes the mistake of thinking that his Dad is so clueless that even if I tried to tell him what was up he wouldn't get. And that's the central conflict of the movie can these two guys who have a huge gap in each other's motivations hash it out and figure each other out before they wind up killing each other.
The ending song is so damn catchy I couldn't help but spoil the whole damn thing. Hey it's not just a Disney movie but a Goofy movie. You didn't really think it was going to end on a downer
So okay. I am digging the plot but even you can't take drama in your talking dog movie, it broke from the more orchestral Disney tunes at the time to still find something that sounded pretty cool. And that adds to the other reason this movie is worth watching the movie is kind of a time capsule of 90'sness. Including Pauly Shore.
And a Chucky Cheese knock off. Back. Back Dufus. Back I say,
Okay then. There's lots of kick ass stuff going on in the world but like I said previously, there isn't much I can normally say about big national stuff that somebody else hasn't already said better so I'll leave certain supreme court decisions there.
Nope while this blog wears many hats I think it's best to think of it as a journal of sorts, a public record of whatever is on my mind. Sometimes what's on my mind is big political stuff and sometimes it's.
Okay let's back up. I normally don't do small talk at city council meetings. I suck at it. But I do overhear a lot of it. Two people were talking about the recent trend of superhero movies. The recent trend I love by the way.
I kind of wanted to rebut the comment but hey the internet has already done the. "Why are superheroes in?" convo to death.
It was another off hand comment in that conversation that sent my brain flying.
"Why can't they be more like Disney movies."
Okay then.
The reason why that's kind of hilarious should be obvious, but again it got me thinking. How did we get here. How did we get here. How did we get to the point where a Disney movie is a Disney movie and you notice when it isn't?
At least in terms of big hollywood that's kind of wierd. It's not so much with indie studios or indie subsidiaries but with studios themselves it kind of is (not counting marvel).
If I say a movie was put out by Lionsgate or Warner Brothers that tells you nothing about the content of the film at least not in the same way something like who wrote, directed or acted in it does so why Disney.
Well I think I kind of answered my own question there for a bit.
See when people are talking about Disney movies as Disney movies they tend not to be talking about the great continuum but of various eras of Disney.
You have golden age Disney which I shouldn't knock. But the think about Golden age Disney is that it was somewhat brief. We are oddly approaching the point where Disney as a film Company in terms of production history is outstretching the production run of it's namesake producer.
And as such what I consider to be the trademarks a Disney movie may not line up with the older generation who remember the Golden Era.
Me. Well I came up watching the dawn of the Renaissance.
But while love those movies I'll the first to tell you that I wasn't paying attenton to those stories because of plot or character. My parents trusted the mouse so I didn't have to ask twice to get into Lion King.
And while yes I think those movies hold up great the movies I actually started thinking about (beyond the brainwashing) are the ones that signaled the end. And damn it I so want to defend them.
And once you get past "Reflection" Mulan is pretty straight old school war flick with the usual beats.
My point is that Disney movies of my time were a lot bigger on the adventure than the princess days. So it kind of makes since to me that that they would getting in bed with Star Wars and Marvel stuff now.
Heck I would argue that that's what made the Disney Renaissance the Disney Renaissance. That the company felt a lot more comfortable with and as a result was better at making movies where a lot of action has to take place on camera.
But that of course begs the question of gender. Is the reason why so much fonder of those movies is that more of them were being made for a male audience. Oh god and talking about Disney and gender opens a whole host of issues I don't feel like talking about right now.
Speaking of Frozen. In a lot of ways it is a throw back to the more action heavy renacance movies more than the more romance and comedy stuff of the Golden Age. But all the same it arguably has a lot more drama than even the movie based off of Shakespeare.
Oh and a thousand lit snobs want to kick my ass right about now.
Trying to dissect Frozen is also a little more head work than I want to do right now. But it makes my list of movies that were meaningful to me, That helped me wrap my brain around some emotional... thingy I was having at the time, helping me contextualize what I was feeling and why? Andhonestlythatisanotherpost.
But back to my point. Walt's been dead for nearly 50 years. And It's hard to say a Disney movie is still a Walt Disney Movie.
There was a time when that may have been a bad thing but I think we're long past that point.
There are bigger more pressing things going on in the world but I've been stalling and I need to get Monday's regular City Council Meeting out. Mostly the reason why it's not out is my sleep schedule has been screwed (this time in a good way) and so I find myself being knocked out for long periods of my day but the procrastination has made something despondently clear.
I will have a sad sad little life if the arguments between Pamela Gerald and Council President Sylvia Jordan go on.
Oh they've always gone at it feels like ever since Siver left Jordan's been taking things personal and so it gets worse and worse.
My view is and has been whoever steps up to the mic in the communications portion should be able to say what they want as long as what they want is either factually true or relevant opinion. That forum is a government owned one after all, but Jordan tends to do a bad job at saucing out the difference opinion and slander.
If someone wants to talk to Council they should be able to do it before votes are taken, 3 minutes might not be enough time to get the point across on complicated issues or even emotions, and yes it can be crushing when somebody in a position of power tells you how you feel, not the facts you cited but how you feel is wrong or stupid. (Hear that Jayne Cobb!)
But all the same Gerald doesn't help my case when she flirts with and occasionally crosses the previously mentioned line between opinion and slander on a weekly basis.
And I'd be lying if I didn't say I feel a little bit personally responsible. Look I'm going to keep doing what I do because transparency and all, but it irks me when people use my blog/video as a stage to talk to third parties not in the room rather than each other turning the objective recording of events I meant this to be into a parody of itself. CSPAN effect my ass.
