fine whine

"You can never go back" -- Nirgal

Back when I was a high school student, I had a backpack.

There were a number of things that made mine different from everyone else's, though. First, it was made by a company called Drifter that makes simple but very durable bags out of parachute canvas. This backpack is still in great shape and probably will last another decade, particularly since I haven't used it much since graduating from college. Having served me well for over nine years the bag has seen more than its share of different contents.

In high school I carried a small toolkit with me in the side pockets. I had a nut driver (basically a wrench for two common sizes of nuts and bolts), a flathead and phillips-head screwdriver and a utility knife. Oddly enough, even after I started carrying my multitool--which had a replacement for each one--I probably still kept those in the backpack pocket anyway. But I digress.

Attached to the strap closing that pocket were a number of rolls of tape. Sometimes I had a roll of duct tape, black electrical tape, and even for a while some gaffer's tape. Always I had there a roll of masking tape, though.

A lot of other students had customized their backpacks in various ways, sewing or gluing patches to them and drawing or painting them. Such was not an option for me, however, since I knew with some certainty that this bag would be lasting me well into the days when I would no longer need it. Though I'm sure I was a humourous and witty fellow back in high school, nothing I could have done to it would likely be very collegiate.

That said, I did not want to leave it plain. Hence the masking tape. With a permanent marker from another pocket I was able to write and draw slogans, sayings and doodles and temporarily attach them to the bag.

After a while, I'll admit, it got a little out of hand. What started as a rotation of two or three strips of tape turned into a bag covered with tape curling at the edges and tearing in the middle. I had things that were meant to be witty and others merely inflammatory. I had NUKE EARTH FIRST! on there twice, once with the emphasis on the planet and the other with the emphasis on the radical environmental group. This I followed with PAVE THE WHALES and things like IF CRYPTOGRAPHY IS OUTLAWED ONLY OUTLAWS WILL 10111010... and I USED TO BE SCHIZOPHRENIC BUT NOW I'M JUST LONELY.

No bumper sticker too dull nor statement too trite was safe from being stuck to my bag. Sometimes I relied on odd juxtapositions, as in the case of TRUST NO ONE / BUT / EAT YOUR BEANS which I never did quite understand but thought was amusing.

I sometimes used quotes, too, from Emerson (WHOSO WOULD BE A MAN WOULD BE A NONCONFORMIST) and characters more fictional, such as Nirgal, mentioned above, who is found in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars novels (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars). The quote (YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK) that I used is somewhat cryptic, but I knew what it meant to me. Once something (or somebody) has changed, there is no return. I knew this in high school even, and only understood it more as the years went on.

On the other hand, some things never change. It has come to my attention that Tobe Hooper, maker of the "classic" Texas chainsaw massacre has released The toolbox murders. I will say nothing more about this film.

I would much rather discuss Zach Braff's excellent Garden state, a film which I thoroughly enjoyed watching yesterday. In it, Braff's character Large goes home to Jersey for his Mom's funeral and to pick up pieces left over nine years before. Or something like that.

There's a great scene early on that has Large sitting on a couch, surrounded by a buzz of activity from sped-up partygoers and other hubbub. He's sitting still and everybody else is zooming around him. I know exactly how that feels.

It becomes obvious from this and other scenes that Large is not the person who left town so many years ago. He encounters a lot of people who recognize him but he remains distant. The only person he becomes close with is Sam, played excellently by Natalie Portman. She shows more talent in this movie than most I've seen her do since Leon: the professional. Peter Saarsgard puts in a good turn as the only friend with whom Large is really able to reconnect, albeit still from a distance. I found myself thinking that he'd be a convincing son of John Malkovich, and I later discovered he'd played that very role in The man in the iron mask. Go figure.

As for homecomings, though, the movie's right on. Every time I leave somewhere coming back is more and more different. Last month when I went back to Evanston I'd found so much that had changed, from people to buildings and everything in between. Of course, I didn't write and direct a movie about it, let alone such a good-looking and intelligent one.

It gives me pause to realize how much Mr. Braff has done onscreen and off and to know that he's just about my age. I look at what I do, and then I watch something like Garden state, and I get all sad and envious. Why can't I write stuff like that? Other than the lack of drug use and friends who know Klingon and a Hollywood career and a psychologist father and a disabled mother and a secondhand motorcycle, I'm not all that much different from the character in the movie. I can only assume the same for Zach, at least metaphorically, or that he's really, realy good at writing believeable characters. So where's the great story about coming back to suburban Ohio? Not anywhere on this site, I'd wager.