Donika Miller's Blog

A post on the Rudius Messageboard recently reminded me of a little song, written to eulogize Jim Henson. I warn you, if you're between the ages of 25 and 40, it is difficult to listen to without crying: A Boy and His Frog, song and lyrics. It's wonderfully performed, and I'll get to the songwriter's story later, but a few lines jumped out at me:

You could never just do the expected
I was just an idea in a bog
But you sewed up your dream and we made quite a team
Jim and Kermit, a boy and his frog.

The Muppet legacy, Sesame Street, even Yoda-- Jim Henson was either the driving force or direct collaborator on those not-too-shabby projects among many others. All of that descended from his decision one day to act on this nagging puppet idea in the back of his head. He decided to hire that frog. "It's so crazy it might work..." I'm sure there are loftier sources (than none, ha) I can quote, but it's a notion well accepted yet seldom acted upon.

A while back a very talented illustrator friend wrote to me, "I have this idea for a comic strip. It's a prairie dog who is also a competitive cycler. He goes around the world in different races, and has an almost Don Quixote approach to reality and catalogue of experiences. Does that sound crazy?" Knowing her vast art skills, depth of sensitivity, and sharp sense of humor, all I could think (and reply) was, "No crazier than a little idea a guy named Berkeley Breathed had one time." (I'm still waiting on her to start that project, so bitch, if you're reading this, get on it.) Or to use a more modern example, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. A short animation series about an order of french fries, a milkshake, and a wad of meat... who solve crime... and fight with (not against) aliens? Yet it not only works, but is fiercely beloved by its fans. Somehow, Frylock, Shake, and Meat Wad resonate. These ideas might not sound particularly crazy now that we see how they played out. Jim Henson's vision and brilliance are almost irrefutable in retrospect, but imagine you're his parents, and a young Jim tells you, "I was thinking I might like to do something with puppets. You see, I've got this frog character..." Worse, imagine you're him and find yourself investing everything in this.

Make no mistake, when you choose to pursue something like puppetry, magic, sculpture, competitive dance, strongman training, you are waging some stake on it, as any discipline requires a level of personal sacrifice and faith. That's why tons of mediocre ideas make it to the surface. They're low risk and have easily identified outcomes, but they're also treated and traded that way-- commodity intellectual trends with a shelf life. Many of the biggest ideas, the truly lasting and unassailable ones, have been sort of crackpot at the start. "The first quarter of this book will be told from the perspective of the retarded brother..." "I'm going to do a series of paintings saturated in blue for a while..." "Perhaps the Earth revolves around the sun instead..." "What if I could turn the lights on and off just by clapping my hands?" Within the art world, when it works, a crazy idea both shows us the world through a funhouse lens, and illuminates a basic shared humanity-- our ugliness, absurdity, humor, sorrow, and beauty. My friend's strip would be no more about prairie dogs than Aqua Teen Hunger Force is about fast food. As abstract summaries, those things sound silly and pointless, but they're really just the seed of the thing.

Cultivating a crazy idea might open a portal into something more, and it's rarely the risk it seems. Your execution very well could fail the first time, but a small part of it may inspire someone around you and open a mutually beneficial conversation, for which you're both the better. Or you might hit upon something that takes off on its own, and while you'll see your influence clearly in the first wave of response, there's a ripple effect beyond anything you can reckon in your lifetime. In either case, nothing lost and much gained in the trying. Jim Henson knew for sure that a lot of kids were a little smarter and a little happier because of his work, but he could have never predicted how deeply he inspired Tom Smith, a MarCon participant, as well as competent Kermit impressionist, that he composed one of the most moving eulogies I've ever heard (and I'm Irish). He could also never predict how that song would reach a 32-year-old woman via the Internet, weeping openly in her dimly lit New York apartment, remembering running in excited circles with her little brother when The Muppet Show got it started each Friday night, and then sitting down to write this post. And hopefully someone who reads this post will start investing in his frog-- ideally researching a patent on an alarm clock that wakes you up by rubbing your back and gradually lifting your blinds. It could change the world, I tell you.

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In unrelated (and semi-hypocritical given the above) news, I saw The 300 this weekend and don't really understand why it was made. I'm not even going to bother avoiding spoilers here, because, come on, it's The 300.

My first problem with it was my fault. Somehow I got it in my head that it was a serious movie, and was initially having trouble adjusting to its mood and style. Are they going for a Clash of the Titans thing here? Do they know that's a goofy film? In the first battle, using a tactic known among most historians as the Shove-n-Stab, the 300 would quite literally shove the apparently tens of thousands of Persians back with their shields, simultaneously raise their shoulders, skewer the first row of Persians with their spears, and then climb over the bodies to shove the next line back, rinse, repeat. I laughed out loud, came to grips with the movie's intent, and the battle ended with the 300 and I in jaunty spirits. The next battle scene was at night, and the main thing I noticed was that their shields were about 2/3 the size of their original shields. It turned out to be the only scene with the small shields, so I must assume that the Spartans used mini-shields at night like women carry smaller evening purses. Another thing that stood out, and had from the start, was the attention demanding cgi effects, though you'll love them if you're a gay man with an ab fetish. After the sporty daytime battle and more formal evening competition, both of which the Spartans win, the rest of the movie pretty much goes: a lot of beheadings, several cool scenes involving arrows, a relentless onslaught of Persian attacks, and a handful of verbal faceoffs with Xerxes. Eventually the Spartans all die, but with honor. I guess.

As we left the theater I told my boyfriend that I thought it was pretty stupid, and he reminded me that it was based on a graphic novel. I knew that and would have been well served to keep it in mind. It made me more comfortable with certain details, such as the fact that the Persians had monsters, like actual monsters, fighting on their side. In that sense I have to give it up for The 300. The costumes and caricatures are great-- I enjoyed the polished metal masks and dark cloaks of the menacing Immortals, and Xerxes' vaguely homoerotic yet completely disco chainsuit and accessories were a treat. And I did appreciate that the long series of battles was a colorful pageant for the different Persian conquered cultures. Like It's a Small World with lots of blood, which if you think about it, is more honest. Still, there were some weird inconsistencies in this movie that I can't explain away by its graphic novel roots. The queen's role and authority were never clear, and the Captain exhibited two conflicting attitudes about sacrificing his son for Sparta with no explanation for the change. I voiced this to my boyfriend, who just gazed off into the horizon and sighed, "Yeah, but isn't that the internal struggle for any Spartan?"

Apparently this movie was deep for guys.

Not really, but I can see why he discouraged me from dissecting it. I'm guessing guys would rather savor the gore and move along. Personally, I think if you have a gaming console, you can see it for free at home. And as my dinner companion last night pointed out, at least at home you might win. This movie is getting a lot of play for being political, but I say that's a waste of intellectual energy. Maybe the book is (I at least hope it's more substantial), but just let this be what it is: a dumb movie. It's more enjoyable that way.

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