The Wedding Approaches

On Saturday, I will be getting married. It still feels distant, but I know the time approaches fast. There is not much to do - just some decisions regarding the selection of alcohol during the reception. Oh, yes. Rachana and I have not practiced our first dance outside of selecting our song. The potential for a wonderful disaster exists.

How do I feel - I dunno. I feel excited, but normal. I am not nervous. Perhaps, I will be Friday night during those few hours to myself when I am alone and have a chance to introspect. Perhaps, not - I will be tired. I look most forward to seeing my family again and having all my friend who are able to attend come. Even the others who cannot make it have shared their excitement and good tidings with us.

I am very humbled by the blessings bestowed by everyone and the effort people are making to attend. I hope that we are great hosts, and the guests enjoy their time.

I want to say something insightful or profound, but I have nothing right now. Seldom are thoughts as significant as one thinks they are, though. On Saturday, though, I will answer my to-be-wife's chief question - "Why do you love me?" It's an answer I have withheld from her and told her when we marry, I will tell her.

On Saturday, God willing, I will. Okay, time to leave early from work and deal with the last few things. See you there on Friday, etc.

Words Thrown Away

In monumental stroke of bad luck, I left my wedding speech on my work desk. It seems the carpets were cleaned last night, and my paper pad was knocked to the floor. Once on the floor, my speech was steam cleaned.

It is ruined. The words smeared about. I have the gist in my head as well as the order of thoughts that I wanted to discuss in the 3-3.5 minutes I allotted to myself, however. And I think that is what I will do.

I like having a plan, but I feel as though plans are skeletons, outlines if you will permit, of what to do.

My father and I laid out each class I would take from freshman year to graduation of high school and then college. Remarkably, the high school plan was about 80%-90% the same. There is not much in high school that was going to attract my attention. If it was an AP class, I was going to take it and get the credit. In that process, I started college with 40-45 hrs of credit.

This laid the groundwork for my undergrad. So much of the early years of my father and my plan was already accounted for. I had room to explore and try new things. So, I did. Instead of taking 17-18 hrs some semesters, I backed off and took 12-14 hrs per semester that contributed towards my degree. I took a "throwaway" class each semester, like athletic conditioning, basketball skills I, Introduction to Hinduism's Origin, a hero's origin, or even a class on relativity [pass/fail]. The freedom and extra time also make a difference during football season when you are attempting to unleash 1000 crickets in the middle of the night on Nebraska's, the visiting team, hotel floor -- it gives you time to plan.

I have the outline in my head as well as a version of what I am going to say. And now, I have time/freedom to explore creative options for what I want to say. I have an opportunity to let my heart speak its mind to my wife-to-be. I have an opportunity to tell my parents what they mean to me. And, I have an opportunity to acknowledge my friends for what they have done to me.

I do not know exactly what I will say any longer. But, I do know I have a general idea from the original speech. And come game day, June 5th, whatever I do say will be in my voice. There will be no screen as we create when we edit or plan things out.

It's going to be exciting. And for some reason, I just know I will do well.

15 days. Bring it.

Villains

What makes a good villain?

There must be an action that represents a point of no return and hope for redemption.

The point of no return aligns the audience with one of the sides - good or evil. The Joker in Batman and Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels are also great archetypes for villains. There is nothing redeeming about them; they are manipulative and completely evil. Joker and Voldemort also share another trait - badassness. Both characters have a formidable presence and possess great powers, namely intelligence and wizardry, respectively. They are worthy adversaries for any hero.

One of my favorite, more recent examples is Ra's al Ghul from Batman Begins. There is part where Batman's training with the Himalayan ninjas ends, and Ra's al Ghul asks Batman to kill a guy for stealing a goat or something. Batman looks at him in disbelief, but Ghul is completely serious. This Ghul's moment - despite becoming Batman's father figure, he asks him to do something so unmistakeably evil. This is Ghul's point of no return - we no longer care about all that he has done for our hero; Ghul's a bad dude. I mean seriously. You don't kill a person for goat stealing unless you went to TX A&M. Those goat/sheep f'ers, argh.

Also, there cannot be any source for redemption. Take Darth Vader for example. What seems as though the perfect formula for a villain - dark outfit, scary voice, great powers, etc. - is actually a hero who has been manipulated. Yes, Vader is the Villain in Star Wars, but by the end of Empire Strikes Back, I, too, sensed the good in him and hoped he would redeem himself.

This is why I look forward to the Iron Man 2 movie. Mickey Rourke's character plays Ivan Vanko. For the purposes of the film, he plays "Whiplash", who is Russian, brilliant, and deranged. Now, in the comics, Ivan Dranko was the Crimson Dynamo - the communist version of Iron Man. But, this movie makes him Whiplash, which is fine. It's just an amalgamation of both characters.

How will he be? Will there be a point of not return? Will there be redemption? I doubt it on the redemption of the villain. I think Whiplash will be flat out evil. I

However, the Iron Man comic story has always been about Tony Stark's demons and his quest for redemption*. He messes up so much, has so much hubris, but when everything is on the line, Tony Stark always sucks it and fights back. Iron Man 2 also adapts the "Demon in a Bottle" storyline where Stark becomes an alcoholic. I find this story very compelling because when all hope seems lost, the redemption occurs.

At some point, I should address in 31 days, I will be married. Ok, I just addressed it. Haar.

* denotes that many would argue the original Iron Man was about Western technology versus Eastern mysticism, ie. Iron Man vs. the Mandarin and his 10 Rings. The movie adaptation takes after the "Demon in a Bottle" plot.

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules

I've been an Elmore Leonard fan for some time. Recently, FX has developed one of his characters, U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens from Pronto and Riding the Rap, into a show - Justified. It stars Tim Olyphant, and I have enjoyed his previous work as well (Deadwood) .

Watching Justified got me thinking about Leonard's rules and other musings of that sort.

Here are Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules on Writing, from New York Times article, “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle."

1) Never open a book with weather.

2) Avoid prologues.

3) Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

4) Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.

5) Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.

6) Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

7) Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

8) Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9) Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

10) Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Interestingly, in the years after this essay was published, Elmore Leonard whimsically said that he had an 11th rule:

"Don't be afraid to break the rules if it makes the story better."

Upcoming Stuff

I have not had as much time as I had hoped for to write. As luck would have it, though, I have been working on a slew of essays for an essay writing class. I think I will post them as my "posts". I need to turn them in first, however.

In other free time, I have spent time helping to plan this wedding that is coming soon - 10 weeks. 10 weeks seems long, but it will go by quickly. The only thing left to determine are the unforeseeable problems that will come up. It would not be a wedding unless things went wrong. I do not intend to become upset unless more than 9 think go wrong between May 1 - June 5, the homestretch.

I like our wedding date, 6.5.2010. In general, I like numbers, and it is fun for me to know we are getting married on the 5th day of a month, and the digits of the date add up to 5 (6+5+2+1=14 -> 1+4 -> 5). I think there probably is someone out there who has assigned meaning to this randomness, however, for me, it is merely a way to pass the time. It's fun; nothing more, nothing less.

I never thought I would ever get praised for my use of semicolons, however, the writing instructor maintained I use semicolon courageously and properly. I like semicolons because they convey the types of pauses or breaks in thoughts I myself have ongoing in my head. I dunno if that is courageous, but I will not turn away compliment from this woman; she is a good writer and her comments on our writing reflect her acumen.

Okay, I need to head to a meeting, but one should expect to start seeing me post my essays up here soon.

2009

2009 was a year of transition. New job, life status changes, ie. engaged, and a lot of moves.

1) I lived in 3 different places during the course of 2009. Nuts. I am sick of moving.

2) I learned what I have to do fitness-wise to enjoy life as I get older.

3) A real job. Work is neat. For once, I get to apply my knowledge that i have spent a lifetime accumulating in school.

4) Writing. Writing emails and blogs is different from real writing. I learned that the hard way, but I am happy with my improvement. And I'll only continue to improve.

5a) Engaged. It's nice I have met my teammate for the rest of my life. Now, it is just a matter of patience for us to wait and being our life together. There is a lot we have to look forward, and I think the wedding is only first of many things to come. I

5b) It's kind of auto-pilot for the guy after the proposal. But I will never forget May 2, 2009 for the rest of my life. Neither will she. The planning and thought leading to it is an incredible experience. And the moment itself? It's indescribable. The only thing you wait for is her answer, though you know the answer already by the look in her eye.

6) Homesickness. It really hit me this year. I miss my family, I'd like to be closer to them distance wise. They're a 3.5 hrs plane flight right now, but a 3 hr car drive would be nice, too.

7) JJ Abrams. You had a great year. Good work.

8) Go Horns. If they win in 1 week, they have chance to do something really special for the next 5-7 years. The door is open for them to become a dynasty. It's up to them to step up and do it.

Penultimate 2009 Post

The older one gets, the more bad habits form. You are in a hurry or lazy or whatever, and you do something the just get by. It's a recipe for bad habits to form.

For me, I formed bad habits with exercise. I would exercise, but it would not be pushing myself. I made excuses for not doing so, because I was afraid that the chronic compartment syndrome symptoms (fro pre-surgery days) would come back.

In truth, I needed to be pushed. I needed to challenged.

I started taking part in an athletic conditioning class after work at the gym. The class is composed of several series of anaerobic and aerobic exercises emphasizing increasing the heart rate and total body conditioning.

At the beginning, of the course, I was lagging, protecting myself, actually babying myself. There was a day earlier, in July, where the instructor stopped class, walked up to me, and looked at me. He questioned why I was wasting my time, if I was not pushing myself.

I was stunned. I did not know how to respond. I wanted to leave. I was embarrassed, humiliated. I went home that night, and I could not sleep as I kept thinking about that. I was not mad the instructor. He was right. What was I doing? How could I be at mad someone, when the only person to really be mad at was myself?

I did not go back to the class the month of August. I spent time remembering what we did for basketball practice back in the day. I called my Mom and asked her about her yoga. I tried swimming again, albeit the water was much colder than I remembered it. I evaluated my diet, looked at what I should do in that realm. I am pretty particular/careful, aside from my addiction to brownies, so I was okay there. I started jogging again.

Slowly, one day I "trotted" around the soccer field at a slow pace. No one would confuse me for Usain Bolt. But, it was more effort I had given to running for a long time. I also came up with a system of exercises to help maintain lean muscle without having to life weights, which bore the hell out of me.

You have a lot of time to think about things when you are running and don't own an iPod. For me, it was a time where I built up motivation, "ganas" as Jaime Escalante talks about in Stand & Deliver.

I showed up to the conditioning class about 4-5 weeks after the incident. The instructor saw me come in, and he gave me the jerked, raised chin greeting. The class started.

I was nervous as hell, what if I did not keep up? Was my time wasted?

60 minutes later, I was sweating. I was a bit sore. But I was standing, and not out of breath.

The instructor approached me after the class and hugged me. He told me he was proud of my effort and I had challenged myself. The best part of it was though, he said I could attend another class where you do the exercises in this class, but you also get to work with speed bags and those big body bags in boxing. This has been really fun the past couple of months. Tiring, but fun.

I spent most of my 20s understanding how to navigate the path of least resistance between a thought to its realization. Graduate school requires a certain amount of navigation to avoid the rocks or Scylla & Charybdis. My teens were all about being stubborn and taking things head-on, forgoing elegant solutions - brute force, if you will.

After my surgery, I quit pushing myself because I was afraid of re-injuring myself. I was scared. Now, I am past that, and ready to embrace exercise as something fun, not something that I have to do. I can do the activities I like, because I can find activities that accomplish my goals. Lean muscle and resistance training is very important for men and women. Free weights exercises are one way of accomplishing this. If you do not like free weights, there are other ways to do reach one's goals.

Life successfully navigated requires an amalgamation of both ways. I had to figure this out, and I have the gym instructor to thank.