Natural Sleep, and First Frost

“I’m trying something new,” I told Kris last night as we were getting ready for bed. “I’m taking Sabino’s approach to sleep.”

“What’s that?” she asked, frowning.

“Well, Kim and Sabino don’t use an alarm clock. They rise when they wake up naturally.” She furrowed her brow, full of doubt. “It works! Sabino’s never late to the office. I didn’t set my alarm last night. I just got up when I woke at 5:15.”

Kris did not reply, but turned over to fall asleep.

As I do every night, I checked the time before I closed my eyes: 10:45. As I do every night, I computed my expected wakeup time based on my typical sleep cycle: 4:45 or 6:15. “Hm,” I thought. “Maybe I should stay up another half hour so that I wake at 5:15.” My normal wake-up time is 5:30, but I’m okay getting up fifteen minutes earlier or later.

I dreamed of cats from outer space, cats with unspeakable powers. I slept well.

I woke at 4:48 and thought, “Maybe I’d better get up now. If I go back to sleep, Kris’ alarm will wake me in the middle of my sleep cycle, and then I’ll be tired the rest of the day.”

I didn’t get up. I fell back asleep. I dreamed of a church service at which Pam and I were arguing together against Joel and Kris regarding an esoteric point of Catholic dogma. Pam and I won the debate, of course, and celebrated with an asparagus pie.

I woke again to discover Toto sitting in front of the clock. “Move,” I said, pushing the whiny blob of black fur aside. “Uh-oh,” I said, elbowing Kris. “I guess maybe Sabino’s sleep method isn’t the best for us. It’s 6:17.”

6:17! While this was exactly the time I had expected to wake, it was also three minutes before I needed to leave in order to be on time for work. “I guess you forgot to set your alarm,” I said. Kris muttered something under her breath and stumbled downstairs for her shower.

On Monday night at our football gathering, some of the older kids played outside on Ron and Kara’s deck. “It’s icy,” they said when they came in for dessert.

“No it’s not,” the adults told them. We knew that we’d just had a rainstorm a couple hours ago, and that a heavy layer of cloud cover meant that temperatures wouldn’t drop significantly. Besides, there were no freezing temperatures in the forecast.

“Yes it is,” said Harrison, but we ignored him.

After dessert, I went outside to play a little with the boys. They were taking turns sliding across the icy deck. “Well I’ll be darned,” I thought. “It is icy.” I took a turn skooching my shoes across the slick spots. Before I went back inside, I looked around the yard for other signs of freezing. There were none. Somehow an isolated patch of ice had formed on Ron and Kara’s deck. There were no signs of frost on the drive home, either, though the sky was completely clear.

On Tuesday morning, however, it had frozen. The grass wasn’t too crunchy, but the car windows were frosted. Here at the shop, the thermometer read -2.8 degrees centigrade. I didn’t expect frost this morning, either, and I didn’t find any until I started the car. Though the other windows were fine, the front windshield had a thin layer of the stuff.

The first frost to me means winter is approaching, and so it is. The rains have come. Nights are cold. Darkness reigns supreme.

Voluntary Addiction

I’ve begun playing World of Warcraft again.

My return to the game has led me to wonder: do most people struggle with low-level addictions, or is there actually a type of addictive personality? I don’t just mean addictions to drugs or tobacco or alcohol, but addictions to little things: coffee, chocolate, ice cream, and computer games. How common are these small compulsions? Or are there simply People Like Me who are more susceptible to addictions than normal folk?

My life has been filled with addictions since boyhood. What are collections if not manifestations of addiction? My web-surfing? That’s a sort of a addiction. My collection of comics? That’s also an addiction. My library of books? That’s a rather large addiction!

Does it take a special personality to succumb to addiction, or does everyone suffer from these compulsions, if only to a small extent? I’m curious.

The taurens dance with joy at my return

You may recall that I became addicted to World of Warcraft earlier this year, spending fully ten percent of my life playing it between last November 23rd and April 15th. At the height of my addiction, I spent twenty percent of my life in game: four or five hours every day.

As may be expected, I’m wary about playing again. Addiction may rear its ugly head once more. The World of Warcraft experience is so fun, so immersive, that even six months after having quit the game cold turkey, I found myself dreaming of its virtual environments. I longed to roam the savannah and the jungle and the mountains defeating gnolls and the like. So I’m giving it a chance.

I have been back in-game for ten days now, and have been pleased with my restraint. I have placed limits on myself. I have a kitchen timer by my side, and it serves as a constant reminder not to become swept up in the game. I stop playing after designated periods of time. I spend days between each play session. I don’t do “just one more thing” before logging off for the night.

I am exercising moderation.

My goal is to limit play to between seven and ten hours a week. This may seem like a lot, but an ancillary goal is to take time from other wasteful activities rather than from those things that are important. So long as I trade web-surfing time or comic-book-reading time for World of Warcraft-time, things are fine.

It’s been great fun to start a new character on a role-playing server, adventuring with both Joel and Scott, as their time allows. I do not regret this decision.

Yet.

Now that I’ve managed to stabilize my weblog, I’m gradually bringing others back on-line. My brother Jeff returned last week, and the Mirons made a new post over the weekend. Welcome back!

(And stay tuned for the debut of Amy Jo’s weblog…)

Messenger

It’s Thursday afternoon and I’m driving home from work. I’m a little blue: I’m tired from lack of sleep, I’m sick, I feel fat. My mental energy is sapped. I am a mass of melancholia. As I enter the last straight stretch before Oregon City, I glance to my left at the open water of the Willamette.

There, in the center of the riverway, is a bird (a duck? a goose?), flying parallel to the road and at exactly my velocity. The bird is skimming the river. Its flight is an arrow. From time-to-time a wingbeat grazes the surface of the water, scattering flecks of white. We travel in tandem at fifty-three miles per hour, the bird slightly ahead of my car. We race past the trailer park, the motel, the marina. For more than a minute, we seem to be joined by a fixed but invisible cable.

It is a thing of wonder. A thing of beauty.

It is exhilarating.

When I go over the hill and enter Canemah, I am no longer blue.

I Heart My C-PAP Machine

Since July 27th, I’ve been using a C-PAP machine to cope with sleep apnea. I’ve used it every night, but have been disappointed because my quality of sleep hasn’t improved as markedly as I’d hoped. “What would happen if I stopped using the C-PAP machine?” I’ve wondered. Last night I got the answer.

I’m still sick, but now the illness has spread beyond my throat. My sinuses are stuffy. Since the C-PAP machine requires the user to breathe through the nose, it’s impossible to use when one has a cold. I slept without it last night for the first time in three months. This morning, I’m exhausted.

Here’s how a typical night works when I use the C-PAP machine:

  • I take between one and three mg of melatonin a half an hour before bed.
  • When I’m ready to fall asleep, I strap on the breathing mask. I fall asleep within a couple of minutes.
  • I sleep soundly for most of the night. Occasionally I wake because the mask has slipped and is leaking air. Else, I wake maybe once each night.
  • About once every couple weeks I have to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.
  • When I wake in the morning, I’m not exactly refreshed, but I feel okay. I certainly don’t need naps during the day.

Here’s how I slept last night:

  • I took three mg of melatonin at bedtime.
  • It took a while to fall asleep, but I was out by 10:15.
  • I woke at 11:45.
  • I woke at 1:15 and had to go to the bathroom.
  • I woke at 2:45.
  • I woke at 3:45.
  • I woke at 4:15 and had to go to the bathroom.
  • I woke at 4:45.
  • I woke at 5:15.
  • When I got out of bed at 5:30, I was exhausted. I’m still exhausted.

Last night is typical of my sleep pattern before I got the C-PAP machine. It seems that the time and expense have been worth it after all. I’m generally not as wholly rested in the morning as I ought to be (this could be improved by getting an extra half hour of sleep, I think), but at least I don’t have to take naps during the day. There’s no question that I’m going to have to catch an hour of sleep at some point today. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I need to drive to Salem and back shortly; that’s going to be a challenge.

Friends and Neighbors

The Chinese man who owns the dry cleaners helped me carry my clothes to the car today. He scolded me for laying the garments on the back seat. (I make one large dry cleaning trip per year, which means transporting a score of shirts, a dozen pairs of pants, and various sundries. I typically stack this mound on the back seat.) “Hang like this,” he said, demonstrating the proper method.

“This your first time here?” he asked, looking at me as if I were a novice at the whole clothes-cleaning thing.

“Second,” I told him.

He nodded and stroked one of my shirts. “Good quality clothes,” he told me, which left me wondering: what does this mean? Despite my wife’s opinion, is my taste in clothing impeccable? Or — and I fear this to be the truth — do I have the same fashion sense as an elderly Chinese man? Does the dry cleaner guy also buy his clothes at Costco?

On the drive home, I decided it might be fun to be a dry cleaner, but an immoral dry cleaner. Imagine! I would never have to shop for clothes again. I would have an entire store filled with garments from which to draw my wardrobe. A nice dinner out? This shirt looks perfect, and it’s not due to be picked up until next Tuesday! Some people fantasize of stealing cars or robbing banks; I dream of borrowing other people’s clothes. (Especially woolen clothes!) My evil-o-meter just doesn’t go very high, I guess.

At home, I stopped to speak with the neighbor across the street. He was wearing a t-shirt which proclaimed in large type: GET IN THE BOAT. John is a retired teacher. He spends his autumns in Oak Grove, but he winters in New Zealand, and then spends the bulk of the year on his boat in Alaska. Today he told me all about his boat generator and how he wants a new one. (“There’s a new Honda model that produces a regular sine wave,” he said. “You can even plug a computer into it!”)

John turned the conversation to my car, and as usual I bemoaned the sorry lot of my Ford Focus. It’s just not the right car for me, and yet I’m not likely to get a new car any time soon. I’m a “drive it til it’s dead” kind of guy.

“Keep the oil changed, and it’ll last forever,” he said.

“Oh, I keep it changed,” I said. “I change it every five thousand miles.”

John shook his head. “That’s not often enough,” he said. “You need to change it every three thousand miles.” He frowned, then turned and walked away. I wanted to protest: for twenty years, I’ve changed my vehicles’ oil every five thousand miles. I’ve never had any trouble! I take care of my cars! I felt I’d failed some crucial test of manhood, as if I’d fallen in his sight.

As I walked to the mailbox (carrying three bundles of dry cleaning), John stopped at his front door: he turned to smile at me and wave.

I spent my evening skimming the library books I’ve had checked out since July: Cooking By Hand, Slow Food, The Elements of Taste, The User’s Guide to the Brain, The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told. I soaked in a hot tub and browsed. Then I sat in bed and browsed. I still feel sick, so I went to sleep early, my C-PAP mask and my eyecover dutifully in place.

Kris woke me from a light doze. “You have to listen to this,” she said, handing me the telephone. Jenn had left voice mail earlier in the evening that went something like this (the following is a reconstruction, not a transcriptioin — Jenn is the narrator):

Harrison came up to me tonight and asked for a bath. “You don’t need a bath,” I told him. “You’re already clean. You had a bath last night.” Harrison whined. “Please. You don’t have to wash me. I just want to soak in the tub. It’s so relaxing.” “Alright, J.D.” I said. Harrison laughed and said, “Good one, Kris!”

Maybe this is only funny for the Gingeriches and the Roth-Gates. It’s pretty funny, though. Now I need to go back to sleep.

Wet!

After yesterday’s mild wind storm, today we’re suffering a deluge. I have no way to know how much rain has fallen in the past twelve hours, but I suspect the scientific answer is a lot. Today’s rain is heavy and wet and constant, which is unusual. Typical Oregon rain is light and misty and fleeting.

I have fond recollections of bus rides home from school spent staring out at the seasonal marshes and swamps that formed in the pastures and fields around Canby. It’s a bit early for them, but they’re still a welcome sight. They make me feel at home.

The gutters here at the shop have flooded, and Jeff is outside trying to clear them. Puddles are everywhere. I was soaked simply walking from my car to the grocery store earlier this morning. I’m curious to see Tiffany’s reaction to a wet Oregon winter. She’s spent most of her life in southern California, and this weather may prove a burden for her.

In general, I am disdainful of people who use umbrellas in Portland. Not today. Today you have may use an umbrella with my blessing.

I drove to Hillsboro yesterday to deliver some samples. On Farmington road leaving Beaverton, I was stuck behind a black VW Jetta that was all over the road. The driver drifted into a tree-filled concrete median. He drifted into the neighboring lane. He drifted into oncoming traffic.

“This guy is lucky,” I thought. “If there’d been any traffic, he’d have caused an accident.”

I increased my following distance and kept an eye on the car. I jotted down the license plate. “The idiot is probably jabbering on a cell phone,” I thought, “Or drunk. And it’s only eleven o’clock.”

I followed the Jetta for a couple of miles. I frowned at the driver and stared daggers into the back of his head. Then, at a stoplight, I was startled to see two kittens jump into the back window, chasing each other around the car. A third kitten followed close behind.

At the next stop light, I looked more carefully inside the Jetta. There was a kitten on the driver’s shoulders, and one on his lap, standing at the steering wheel. Another kitten was leaping around from seat-to-seat. My anger faded. Suddenly the erratic driving made sense. I, too, would drive like an idiot if my car were full of kittens. In fact, at that moment, I felt an urge to roll down my window and ask the other driver if I could have one of his. The urge passed quickly when I remembered my poor track record with cats in cars. (Most journeys have involved urine.)

Windy!

The traditional foldedspace spooky story can be found at the end of this entry.

Wow. I wasn’t expecting a wind storm, were you? When I crawled out of bed this morning, after the worst of the storm, the winds were still at 23mph with gusts to 43mph.

My drive down River Road from Oak Grove to Oregon City was over a sodden mass of pulpy leaves, a brown slush. Traffic lights were out along 99E in Gladstone. (Some of the drivers along the highway were dangerous, treating these lights as if they were green instead of treating them as four-way stops. Very scary for side-traffic.) The wind had blown down traffic signs between Oregon City and Canby, and there were fallen limbs scattered along the entire route.

This is the first wind storm I can recall in several years. Perhaps I’m overly impressed with its moderate strength because (a) it has been so long since we’ve had another and (b) it occurred during the early morning hours, while we were lying in bed, listening to the windows and the branches and the awnings thump and scrape and clatter.

The last severe wind storm in the Portland area occurred about ten years ago, in November of 1995. I left work early that day to be at home with Kris. The power was out at the shop, so we couldn’t get any work done anyhow. The power was off at home, too, so we listened to a battery-powered radio, and when darkness fell, we read by candlelight.

I wonder if this storm might not have been more damaging if we hadn’t had that massive freeze two years ago. That ice storm destroyed a lot of trees and branches that might otherwise have been injured last night.

I really do seem to have turned the corner on my year-long bout with depression. Through sheer force of will, I am changing the way I think, feel, and act. I like it. Through it all, I’m repeatedly reminded of Action Girl’s Guide to Living, which remains filled with good advice.

It occurred to me last night that some of the best entries I’ve made here at foldedspace are those in which I regurgitate information I’ve gathered regarding Action Girl’s approach: getting things done, a brief guide to better sleep, and get rich slowly What if I were to create a web site specifically devoted to this type of information? Or — dare I think it? — what if I were to write a book that collated this information into one easy-to-use manual? An Action Boy’s Guide to Living, perhaps?

Finally, here’s a foldedspace Halloween tradition: my favorite spooky story.

The Velvet Ribbon
by Ann McGovern

Once there was a man who fell in love with a beautiful girl. And before the next full moon rose in the sky, they were wed.

To please her husband, the young wife wore a different gown each night. Sometimes she was dressed in yellow; other nights she wore red or blue or white. And she always wore a black velvet ribbon around her slender neck. Day and night she wore that ribbon, and it was not long before her husband’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Why do you always wear that ribbon?” he asked. She smiled a strange smile and said not a word. At last her husband got angry. And one night he shouted at his bride. “Take that ribbon off! I’m tired of looking at it.”

You will be sorry if I do,” she replied, “so I won’t.”

Every morning at breakfast, the husband ordered his wife to remove the black velvet ribbon from around her neck. Every night at dinner he told her the same thing. But every morning at breakfast and every night at dinner, all his wife would say was, “You’ll be sorry if I do. So I won’t.”

A week passed. The husband no longer looked into his wife’s eyes. He could only stare at that black velvet ribbon around her neck.

One night as his wife lay sleeping, he tiptoed to her sewing basket. He took out a pair of scissors. Quickly and quietly, careful not to awaken her, he bent over his wife’s bed and SNIP! went the scissors, and the velvet ribbon fell to the floor. And SNAP! off came her head.

It rolled over the floor in the moonlight, wailing tearfully: “I…told…you…you’d…be…s-o-r-r-y!”

Here’s the mp3 for The Velvet Ribbon. Listen and shiver.

Bumper Bowling

I’m sitting at my desk, composing this weblog entry. I’m listening to Neutral Milk Hotel and munching on hickory smoke flavored soy nuts. As I’m mousing around, I bump into a soy bean I must have dropped and, without looking, I snatch it up and pop it in my mouth.

Crunch crunch crunch.

“Hm,” I think. “That doesn’t taste very much like hickory smoke. It tastes rather like grass. In fact, it tastes gross.” And so I spit it out into my hand only to see that I have not been gnashing a stray soy bean but a stray lady bug.

Gross!

We’ve spent the last year trying to schedule a night to take Jeremy and Jennifer out to dinner, a dinner we owe them for favors rendered when we moved into this house. At last we picked out a date — October 28th — only to have Kris sabotage an evening of adults-only gluttony by suggesting we take the kids bowling. I’m glad she did.

We ate burgers and shakes and onion rings at Mike’s Drive-In before heading to Kellogg Bowl in Milwaukie.

I was wary of the place at first. I’m always wary of bowling alleys. In my mind, they’re smoky and seedy and filled with Big Lebowski type losers. It turns out Kellogg Bowl’s a nice place to take the family for a bit of fun. It also turns out that we ought to have had pizza before bowling. There’s a Pietro’s Pizza next door, of which both Jeremy and I have fond memories. Better yet, there’s a direct hotline from the bowling alley to the pizza parlor. You can pick up the hotline, place an order, and Pietro’s will deliver pizza to your lane. That is frickin’ awesome!

As we were waiting for the bumper lanes to open, the owner spied my camera. “Look at this,” he said, motioning me to follow him. He showed me his two digital cameras. “What kind do you have?” he said, so I showed him. “Wow,” he said. “I want something like that someday. Say, come with me.” He led me back to his office, where he showed me his little HP photo printer.

When Jenn came up to get shoes for the kids, the owner asked her about the digital camera she was carrying. She took a couple of photos, and the fellow darted back to his office with her memory card in order to make a couple of prints.

Here’s a little secret: I enjoy bowling. If it ever occurred to me, I might do it on a regular basis. I’m certainly never going to turn down an opportunity to bowl a couple of games. (When I sold insurance in eastern Oregon, I’d often go bowling in the evenings to kill time.) I haven’t been in a couple years. The last time was with Joel and Aimee and Mac and Pam. I thought I had an obsessive weblog entry about that night, complete with scores, but I can’t find it. (This entry has a comment from Joel about that night.)

This was the first time that Harrison and Emma had been bowling. Emma chose a pink ball, of course. Harrison started with an eight-pound ball, but had more success when a woman who worked at the alley brought him a six-pound ball. Many of Emma’s balls c-r-e-p-t down the alley, with barely enough force to topple a single pin when they reached their destination. Harrison did well. He even bowled a strike!

In the non-bumper lane, Kris, Jeremy, and I put up a poor showing. At the end of seven frames, my score stood at a woeful 65. I wasn’t even on pace to break 100. I went in search of a better ball, and I found one. It was pound heavier, the holes were better spaced, and my thumb didn’t stick upon release. I bowled three consecutive strikes. In my last three frames, I scored 76! My final score was 141, which is about average for me.

As we left the bowling alley, Jenn asked Harrison how he liked bowling. “I love it,” he said. “It’s really great.”

We’ll have to go back, but next time Jeremy and I are using the pizza hotline.

My Throat Hurts

I get sick a couple times a year, but usually it’s nothing major: just a head cold accompanied by endless weariness. Once every two or three years, though, I get knocked on my ass by some bug or other. Now is one of those times.

I’ve been fighting something for the past month, and thought I had kicked it. Maybe I hadn’t. Or maybe I caught something from one of the kids at Monday Night Football. (I do a poor job of not sharing food with them.) On Wednesday night, the illness began to take me down. My throat hurt. My nose was stuffed. My throat hurt. I couldn’t sleep. My throat hurt. My throat hurt. My throat hurt.

I stayed home from work yesterday to sleep late. When I woke, my throat hurt. I drank three huge mugs of hot Thai tea. My throat hurt. Hopped up on all the caffeine, I cleaned the entire (!!!) house. My throat hurt. I took a long, hot bat. My throat hurt.

In the evening, Kris made a quesadilla for me. It was my first real food of the day, and tasted more delicious than it ought to be, but after I ate it my throat hurt. I took my temperature for the first time: 99.8. (My personal norm is 98.2, except that it is 97.8 after waking in the morning.) I tried to watch an Africa documentary from Netflix, but couldn’t concentrate. My throat hurt.

I went to bed at 8:00 and slept til midnight, when I woke because my sinuses had become plugged (which is not good while wearing a C-PAP mask), and because my throat hurt. I took my temperature: 100.5. Finally, I sprayed my throat with some of that green gunk, but it didn’t do anything. My throat hurt. (Roths are notoriously slow at applying medicinal treatment to ailments.)

I’ve spent the past hour sitting at the computer, surfing aimlessly, waiting to become tired, or for my sinuses to clear, or, especially, for my throat to cease hurting. I can’t concentrate, though, so mostly I sit here, staring into space, listening to the patter of the cold rain outside the window. I think that maybe I should go downstairs and wash dishes or sort my books out of Dewey Decimal order or do some Extreme Soduku.

But my eyes are watery and sore. My body temperature is 100.0. I want to sleep.

My throat hurts.

Serenity

This review is a month late. It’s also very, very long. So sue me.

INTRODUCTION
Joel and Aimee and many other geeks have written rave reviews for the recent sci-fi action flick Serenity. Most of these raves come from fans of the television show Firefly, upon which the film is based. I’ve never seen the show, but the film’s geek cred drew me to it. (To be fair, some geeks recognized the film as flawed, and knew that non-fans might feel overwhelmed.)

My short review: this is a good science fiction movie. My long review follows, but first a plot synopsis.

Sometime in the future, Earth has become overpopulated, forcing humanity to migrate (apparently in massive numbers) to another star system. This new star system is some sort of bizarre astronomical anomaly: it contains “dozens of planets and hundreds of moons”. The refugees terraform these planets and moons over the course of decades (centuries?). These worlds are centrally controlled by some sort of Alliance, which may or may not be an authoritarian government. (The political situation seems important, but is only vaguely described.) Life is complicated by the presence of rampaging zombie space pirates (seriously) that periodically raid remote settlements.

As the film begins, River, a young woman with psychic powers (and incredible physical prowess), is being held for experimentation by some top-secret government science organization. Her brother frees her and takes her to the spaceship on which he is the medical officer. This ship is called Serenity, and includes a crew of maybe a half dozen outlaws.

These outlaws travel to an outlying settlement in order to rob the payroll from somebody. (No, this doesn’t really make sense. It’s one of those film things that is more for effect than because it’s actually sensible. Why is the payroll not handled through electronic transactions, or at the very least through checks? I don’t know. It just isn’t. It’s paid in cash.) During the heist, the zombie space pirates attack, and our heroes flee.

Meanwhile, a dangerous government assassin has been dispatched to recover River, the stolen girl. (This assassin kills his marks in a bizarre fashion. He holds a sword on the ground and then causes his victims to fall upon it via some sort of acupressure. Again, this makes no sense, and is solely for effect.) Wherever our heroes go for refuge, the assassin follows, and he kills those who come into contact with the crew.

Eventually, Serenity makes its way to River’s home planet, where we learn that the government had been experimenting with some sort of air-borne pacification drug intended to keep the population malleable. (Sort of like the spores in that old Star Trek episode.) The drug didn’t just pacify, though, but sapped everyone’s will to live. People stopped caring. They died where they stood. (Again, this doesn’t really make sense. It doesn’t need to. It’s just a plot device.) Coincidentally, this same pacification drug caused a portion of the population to turn into the zombie space pirates that have been causing trouble.

Our heroes decide that the entire star system must know about this heinous crime (if crime it is), so they head for a technogeek guy they know. Unfortunately, the government assassin has anticipated this move, and a three-way final battle ensues (heroes vs. government vs. zombie space pirates). In the end, the heroes win, but not without cost.

It’s all rather fun while it lasts, despite the improbabilities, but the film hasn’t held up well over the ten days since I viewed it. Most of what I have to say is negative. As you read the following, realize that I enjoyed the film, and would probably grade it a B.

CHARACTERS
There are many characters in Serenity, but they’re mostly uninteresting. I felt no connection with any of them except River, on whom the film devotes the most time for backstory. River is a fantastic character — and the film is all about her — but truth be told, she’s not used enough. She’s less a character than a convenient re-usable deus ex machina, and a pretty figure to pose in comic book stances. (And she is a pretty figure. Is there anything sexier than a fit young woman, barefoot, clad in only a thin gauzy dress, laying waste with mad martial arts skills? No, there is nothing sexier.) I’d like to know more about Kayleigh, and the captain, and some of the minor players, but I’m never given the chance. (One character seems completely superfluous. Ariana (or whatever her name is) serves no purpose. It’s my guess that she’s in the film simply to tie up some loose plot thread from the television series. She was apparently once the captain’s girlfriend.)

Furthermore, the characters are not complex. Each is defined by a single motive. Kayleigh loves the doctor. The doctor is protective of River. River is a psychic killing machine. (People keep saying she’s mentally disturbed or crazy, but we have no evidence of this other than the fact that people keep saying it is so.) Some characters have no motives: the pilot and his wife, what’s their deal? Who knows. The lumox is a lumox. The captain’s motive is one-liners.

As a sidenote: River looks a little like Fiona Apple, don’t you think?

Musical Waif Ass-Kicking Waif

Captain Malcolm looks like Nate Fisher from Six Feet Under or like Craig Briscoe from Alaska.

Architect Undertaker Outlaw

DIALOGUE
Speaking of one-liners…

Though writer-director Joss Whedon‘s plotting is strong, and his dialogue is brisk, he has peppered the script with the twee smart-alecky humor that I so dislike in his writing. (Whedon is the man behind the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise, and is currently writing one of the many flavors of X-Men, the only flavor that interests me.) I’ll wager his fans love the one-liners. I do not. They’re not funny. His character’s snappy, “witty” retorts don’t make me laugh; they make me grimace. The most egregious of these witticisms are reserved for the beginning of the film, during the character development moments. I can’t help but think that if Whedon had spent more time on character development than on jokes, maybe the audience would care more about the characters.

I was worried that the entire film would be filled with one-liners, but fortunately they subside, and some are eventually quite funny.

Here’s an example of an exchange I like. During the climactic battle scene, as he is about to kill the captain, the government assassin asks, “Do you know what your sin is?” The captain replies, “Hell, I’m a fan of all seven, but right now I’m going to have to go with wrath.” A bit stagey and far too wordy, but amusing. (And, yes, I realize that line sounds as if it might be spoken by Sawyer from Lost.)

Here’s an example of a more typical “funny” line. After a drawn-out chase on a landspeeder of sorts, River says, “I swallowed a bug.” Ha ha! Later, the captain says, “Doctor, I’ve taken your sister under my protection here. If anything happens to her, anything at all, I swear to you: I will get very choked up. Honestly. There might even be tears.” If you find this sort of banter witty, then you may love the film. If you find this dialogue forced and, well, dumb, then there are parts of this film that must be endured rather than enjoyed. (You can read more quotes here.)

I do like the conceit that these characters speak in American Civil War-era English. It gives the setting a sense of foreign-ness while still being accessible. (Plus, I love American Civil War-era English.)

STORY
I like the “Born in a Trunk“-style (or Matrix-style, if you prefer) onion-peeling levels of unreality that start the film. (You can watch the first nine minutes of the film here.) A voiceover history of the story’s setting turns into a school lecture turns into a memory turns into a holographic projection. (I may even have missed a layer.) This history lesson does a fair job of introducing the setting without being too clumsily obvious an exposition dump, but it doesn’t succeed entirely. I want to know more about this bizarre solar system. Why does it have “dozens of planets and hundreds of moons”? How does that work? Why were so many able to be terraformed? Just how large is the habitable zone around this star? Aren’t most of the planets far too cold or far too hot for terraforming ever to work? Tell me more!

There are certain sections of the film where I felt a little lost. At one point, our heroes flee to a sort of religious commune in a desert. Why? There seems to be some sort of shared history there, but the audience is never made to understand what sort of shared history that might be. And later, when the commune is massacred, we’re supposed to care, but we don’t.

Other things bother me, too. The post-heist action sequence is lame, especially the whole “we can’t pick up another guy because he’d be too heavy” bit. We’re told River weighs ninety pounds. Surely the landspeeder thingie can hold River and a medium-sized guy just as well as it could hold a jumbo-sized guy, right? Why does the number of people matter? Wouldn’t mass be the limiting factor?

Also: Not only is the character Ariana superfluous, she’s responsible for one of the most ludicrous scenes in the film. She’s a priestess. She apparently once had a relationship with the captain, so the bad guys use her as bait to draw our heroes to them. While under the watch of the government assassin, she’s able to obtain some sort of gunpowder-based bomb, plant it before her Buddha, and then use an incense stick to cause it to go off at exactly the right moment to prevent the captain from being killed. Huh? This is one of the most improbable things I’ve ever seen in a film.

EFFECTS, ETC.
I liked the design of this film. The feel of the society is unique and interesting: a sort of combination between the Wild West and modern SE Asia. The setting sometimes feels like Blade Runner, but less industrial.

The space battles are similar (but slightly superior) to the opening sequence in Revenge of the Sith. They also share some of the same flaws. There are too many ships, there’s too much going on, and the camera shots are too tight for the audience to have any idea of what is actually happening. It’s just frenetic chaos, and that’s not fun to watch. It’s as if the plot shuts down for two minutes and you have to tell yourself: “This is a generic space battle; nothing about it matters.”

Another (bad) similarity to Star Wars: remember how absurd it was in The Phantom Menace that the Trade Federation could blockade a planet by forming a ring around its equator? Well, the same goofiness is present in Serenity. Twice. Those who write science fiction films need to be taught to think in three dimensional space. (It was even a major plot point during the final battle in Strar Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, but in that film, the writers used this knowledge to their advantage.)

Too many things in this film occur just for the effect. (Remember this was one of my complaints with Peter Jackson’s Tolkien grotesques.) In the first few minutes, River climbs a wall and braces herself on the ceiling in order to escape detection, an act that seems wholly gratuitous.

Why not just hide behind a cart of medical supplies? Because that wouldn’t look cool! Near the end of the film, River (who, remember, is a one-woman killing machine) goes apeshit on a horde of zombie space pirates that is attacking Serenity. Most of her rampage occurs off-screen. When it’s finished, the camera pulls back to reveal River, surrounded by zombie space pirate corpses, holding two massive axe-like weapons (both of which are dripping copious amounts of blood). She looks like a waif-orc. It’s meant to be cool, but it’s actually funny in a sort of ludicrous way.

As a director, Whedon shoots with fine dramatic effect, often employing what I consider comic book shots: he shoots from unusual angles or perspectives (overhead shots, ground-level shots), uses atmospheric lighting, and loves to stand his actors in super-hero poses.

The soundtrack was good: varied and interesting. It wasn’t omnipresent (as John Williams’ recent overblown Star Wars scores), but when it was there, it was fun.

CONCLUSION
Serenity is the sort of film that, upon reflection, doesn’t hold up well. There are just too many gaps of logic, and too much is done for effect rather than for the service of the story. And yet I liked it. I liked the film despite its sophomoric humor, its superfluous characters, its strange science. It has a charm and likeabiltiy about it that are missing in the recent Star Wars films, for example.

Is this the best science fiction film of the 21st century? I don’t think it even comes close, not even with qualifications. Did it deserve to bomb at the box office? Probably not. Why did it bomb at the box office? I can think of two reasons. First, the trailer was terrible. The day before I saw Serenity, I watched a preview for it in the theater that almost made me decide against it. Second, it’s just not one of those films that makes you want to run out and recommend it to other people. I have many geek friends who are also unfamiliar with this universe and story, but I don’t intend to proselytize to them.