Ten Dwarves Rejected By Disney

by Thomas M. Pender

10)          Shifty

9)            Sleazy

8)            Hyper

7)            Touchy-Feely

6)            Stiffy

5)            Runny

4)            Moony

3)            That dwarf with the irregular rash that looked kinda pus-filled and contagious.  Didn’t keep him around long enough to get a name on the application.

2)            Manicky-Depressivey

and

1)            Felony

Empty Staff

by Thomas M. Pender
 

It's time to kill Music
For crimes against
The Heart
For the rape of Love
And the murder of Faith

We once sang to the Son
And now we play to the Fire
Our melodies were sprung from light
But our tunes now are children of heat
If you scream
They will dance
For while they can still hear
They no longer listen

God gave Music to Man
And Man shared Music with Hell
To create Noise

Our babies know no Beauty
Because they cling the Noise to their ears
They have forgotten how to talk
How to listen
How to feel
How to think

The notes no longer engage the heart
But the gut
Instinct
Drive
Fear and Hate
The light dims as the fire spreads

Start again
With an innocent child
And empty staff
And Love



written by t. michael pender  3/6/97
copyright 1997 T. Michael Pender.  All rights reserved.

“Beaver”heart

by Thomas M. Pender

Poor Mel Gibson.  Just 15 years ago, he was a king.  Braveheart had conquered the box office and was conquering the video market, and he was the professional and personable darling of the media.  Everyone loved Mel.  Then, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto got the public scratching their heads.  Next, a handful of boneheaded public displays and comments happened, and Mel became a Hollywood cautionary tale.  He was hardly seen in the media at all, except for the occasional mugshot.  His spotlight fizzled.

Thus, I was very skittish when I saw him on the cover of a DVD entitled The Beaver.  The same cover featured Jodie Foster, who never ceases who bore me, and . . . a hand puppet of a beaver.  Color me afraid.  Yet, the description of the film made me at least wonder what was in the film.  Gibson was portraying a businessman who, upon reaching the bottom of a deep depression, channels his personality through the aforementioned hand puppet.  This plot could be treated many different ways: as a flat-out silly comedy, as a heartwarming dramatic comedy, as a creepy haunting tale, or as a strict dramatic portrayal of someone with a mental condition.

I think I was expecting the dramatic portrayal least of all, yet that’s what Gibson delivers here.  He plays a man who, upon failing in two suicide attempts, discovers the hand puppet by chance and brings it along with him.  In no time, the puppet is on his hand, and he sees it as an avenue to channel his trapped personality through.  This has been done many ways on stage and screen, with possibly the most famous being Cyrano de Bergerac.  The puppet’s persona, which just so happens to be that of a British-speaking beaver, summons Gibson from his sleep the next morning, and announces that he (the beaver puppet) is going to start making some major changes in his (Mel Gibson’s) life.

The first thing that impressed me was the “low-tech” take on this puppet.  It could have come to life with the help of special effects, high-paid animators and a celebrity cartoon voiceover.  Yet here, it is simply an inanimate puppet on Mel Gibson’s left hand, and it is Gibson who is voicing the puppet.  When I say “voicing,” I don’t mean that we hear the puppet’s voice and it happens to be the star’s voice.  I mean that when the puppet talks, Gibson himself is actually talking.  While he maneuvers the puppet’s mouth, he speaks, just as he would if he was putting on a puppet show.  I dug the simplicity of it, plus it really added to the mental illness issues of the film.

Foster is cardboard as ever, but I am continuously entertained by Anton (Star Trek) Yelchin, who plays Gibson’s oldest child.  He has done comedy well, and here, does a fine job as a son who is tired of dealing with his father’s problems, and just wishes he’d go away.  He has his own hatful of problems in high school, and feels that with his father’s problems and his mother’s distractions, he has no one to turn to with his issues.  Again, this character and situation could have been written and portrayed in many fashions, but Yelchin does a fine job with straight drama.

Filmed in 2009, The Beaver wasn’t released until this year, due to Gibson’s aforementioned public issues around the time of the original 2009 release date.  It did incredibly modest business at the box office, and I suspect it’s because I’m not the only one who’s fed up with Mel.  Still, I took a chance and I’m recommending others do, as well.  This is the best acting job Gibson has delivered since 2002’s We Were Soldiers, and the film in general is well worth your time.  No one knows if the star’s personal problems are over, but through a hand puppet and this one performance, I found I could at least forgive his cinematic slip-ups.

The Birth of “Fun Tom”

by Thomas M. Pender

I’m not a real drinker, nor even a “partier,” but I do enjoy going to social gatherings.  I generally have a great time, just talking and joking with people.  Over the years, I’ve learned that the people around me have a good time, too.  I’m at ease in a crowd, I like meeting and entertaining people, and I love to laugh.  This has helped me whenever I’m in situations with new crowds, be it a new city, a new job or just a new social circle.

A few years ago, I got introduced to a new circle of friends through one particular local buddy when he held a gathering at his house.  I knew a couple of people there, but the majority of the soiree was made up of strangers.  Still, the strangers were having fun, so I mingled well.  At some point, the topic turned to pets and/or dogs, and my friend the host suggested I tell everyone a story about a childhood dog.  It was a tale he had heard a few times, and which I have told countless times, because it seems to be universally entertaining.  My friend made this suggestion loud enough that the roomful of relative strangers turned en masse to face me.  This would probably make a great deal of people nervous, but I just saw a sea of ears foreign to my oft-told tale.  All that were missing were a spotlight and a microphone, but I went into my animated yarn as though they were present.

By the time the five-minute story was over, strangers were friends.  They appeared to be pleased that my friend had invited me, and a feeling of family swarmed around me.  This, I suspect, was my friend’s motive all along.

Not very long after I had concluded by anecdote, one woman in the crowd pointed at me and loudly declared, “Fun Tom!”  I thought this was a little overboard after telling only one decent story.  For all they knew, it was my only decent story!  Still, the feeling of acceptance was amplified, and I dug the new silly nickname.

Afterward, whether at another gathering, or merely coming into contact with one of the people I was introduced to that night, it became ritual for someone to declare at outdoor-voice level, “Fun Tom!”  Juvenile and unnecessary and over-the-top?  Yes.  Appreciated and flattering and awesome?  Definitely!

Reputation is a bizarre animal.  You never know when or how you’re going to gain a reputation, nor if it will be positive or negative; such things are impossible to control.  If I had fallen and hit my face on the kitchen counter at this first gathering, or made a pass at someone’s wife, or answered some long-pondered group question off the top of my head, I would have earned a completely different reputation for each scenario.  If nothing so dramatic had happened at all, I probably wouldn’t have one.  It certainly isn’t crucial to have one in order to enjoy a group of friends.  Still, if I’m going to gain a lightning-quick reputation that will last for a few years among a crowd of people I enjoy, being known as “fun” is probably one of the best accidents I’ve ever had in front of an audience.

Fact, Belief . . . and the Shape of the World

by Thomas M. Pender

“I don’t believe you.”

This phrase used to bother me quite a bit as a youth.  When a friend or family member would say this following a statement of mine, I took it personally.  It seemed to be a declaration of mistrust, which was a bit painful.

As I matured, however, this phrase began to amuse me.  If I told a friend that the capital of California was Sacramento, and they claimed they didn’t believe me, that just . . . made them wrong and me right.  I decided to let them disbelieve, and upon further investigation, they would simply learn who was correct and who owed me an apology.

Of course, I’ve been wrong before, too.  A few embarrassments in my youth taught me to state when I knew something to be true, and when to start sentences with “I think” or “I believe.”  Having this practice covered, whenever I would state something as fact, and someone would disbelieve, I found an odd humor in the situation.  I began to respond to the nonbelievers accordingly.

“The capital of California is Sacramento.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, people didn’t believe the world was round, either, but that didn’t make the world any flatter, now, did it?”

Sometimes, I could even get my factual combatants to laugh with this line.  Still, the point was made.  Whether or not someone believes the world is round, shadows on and photographs from the moon prove that it is.  (Also, there are no documented cases of anyone falling off the planet.)  This simply makes nonbelievers humorous.  Likewise, if a fact is stated and someone doesn’t believe it, they also become humorous.

Once, a co-worker called my desk to ask how to spell a word.  I had become a bit of a corporate spelling help desk at the time.  She asked and I promptly responded.  I knew how to spell the word.  I didn’t hesitate, nor did I begin with “I’m not sure, but I think it’s spelled . . .,” I just spelled it for her.  Still, she said, “That doesn’t look right.”  I assured her it was.  She insisted I bring her a dictionary.  I took it to her and stood there while she looked it up.  She was shocked when it was proven that the “odd-looking” word was spelled correctly.  Here again, believing or disbelieving in a fact doesn’t change the fact itself.

Another good example is the existence of God.  It’s simple: either there is God or there isn’t.  There’s no gray area here.  So for simplicity, let’s pretend that 50% of the world’s inhabitants believe in God, and 50% do not.  The fact remains that said existence does not change with belief.  Half the world’s beliefs would be right and half wrong, that’s all.  This realization led me to invent an old saying: “Truth is truth.  Belief is just what gets us through the night.”

So, learning the difference between fact and belief, and stating each one carefully and clearly, I gleefully repeat my line about the shape of the world whenever I’m faced with a trivial infidel.  I believe Magellan would be proud of me.

Ten Suspected Dorm Food Ingredients

by Thomas M. Pender

Until I lived in the dormitories of Michigan State University, beginning at age 18, it seemed that I could never gain weight, and I loved that.  Once exposed to the food in the dorms, my metabolism seemingly shut down, and my weight snowballed.  These are my prime suspects to that crime.

10)          Lard

9)            Helium

8)            Lard

7)            Steroids (the kind that aim only at the stomach!)

6)            Lard

5)            Starch (straight outta the can)

4)            Lard

3)            Marshmallow filling, by the truckloads

2)            Lard

and

1)            Fix-A-Flat

Listening To Me Thinking While Writing

by Thomas M. Pender

When I write

I hear me but

I think like someone else

Watching me think

And move

While I write

While I live

When I smile

How I walk

And the person who is

Me seeing me as I live

Grabs paper when he sees

Life happen around

Me which I have

Non-purposely become

A living part of

And the writer writes

The life I live

On the paper

Where the life becomes

The words

Which echo the life

Of the writer

Though he is writing my life

And I am really living his words

written by t. michael pender 1/20/95

copyright 1995 T. Michael Pender. All rights reserved.

Tree of Boring Confusion

by Thomas M. Pender

There are a precious few actors and actresses whose names alone on billboards and trailers make me want to see a film.  When two come together to make one film, sign me up!  Brad Pitt and Sean Penn are two fine actors with great range, so when I learned that Penn was playing Pitt’s grown son (and Pitt would appear in his flashbacks), I was anticipating an emotional journey, led by these two characters.  Unfortunately, writer-director Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life is a complete waste of time.

But don’t take my word for it.  Penn himself stirred up a bit of controversy in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro about the film.  In it, Penn said, “Frankly, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context.  What's more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly.”  True enough, Penn has very little screen time, and is mainly seen standing around his high-rise office, moping.

If you’ve ever seen the last 30 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’ll understand what I mean when I tell you that the storyline of Tree is no “line” at all, but a kaleidoscope.  You never know from one scene to the next whether you’re going to see a scene of Pitt being a bad macho father to his sons, a scene of Penn moping about with little to no dialogue, or . . . a collage of silent scenes featuring leaves and meadows.

Seriously.

The film is 2 hours and 19 minutes long, but the “action” of the film could be shown in about 40 minutes.  I didn’t see Tree until its recent DVD release, which is a blessing.  Not only did I not waste almost ten times the money on it, but I could fast-forward through the “artsy” nature scenes.  Trust me, there are a lot, and they go on and on and on!

The viewer does not end up learning anything about either character when the credits finally run.  Dad’s borderline mentally abusive, son’s mopey.  The end.  We learn nothing of Dad’s background, and nothing of the son’s adult life.

Speaking of the credits, to further illustrate the bizarreness of the film, there is a story out that when shown somewhere in Europe, a projectionist put in the second reel before the first reel . . . and no one noticed!  I suppose when credits finally told the audience an hour into the film what the name of it was and who starred in it, someone got suspicious, but this does speak volumes about the design of the film.  It’s just scene after scene with no linear or logical pattern, and you gain nothing from watching it.

I won’t give up on either star due to this one film, which is about as “artsy” as a Pollack spill.  I do feel I could do some good by waving people away from it, though.  Put The Tree of Life on your “NEVER see” list today!