If you don't know where you're going, does it matter which direction you go?

There's a strange kind of phenomenom that seems to be popular lately, or anyway noticed by me lately. It seems deserving of a good name but nothing comes to mind. The basic idea is bucking a trend just to buck the trend, and hating anything that's popular just because it's popular. I guess it's been around forever, because I can remember people bitching about how everyone thinks they're so cool for liking black flag but they liked them from the start and they probably like mc donald's, too.

Which, btw, shows me that I have been watching way, way too much highlander: the series. There's a pretty simple formula that follows the movie very closely, so in a sense most episodes are just the original movie being remade over and over: some bad guy shows up or dangerous situation that somehow presents a moral dilemna occurs; this reminds the 400 year old main character of something similar from 50-350 years ago, which triggers an interesting flashback to that often shows why he is reacting to the situation's moral delimna in a somewhat unexpected fashion. Then he chops someone's head off.

Now, think of the pitch meeting for this. If you'd never seen Highlander you'd think this was the most insane idea ever, and you couldn't possibly get something like this made. Nonetheless, they managed to push through a movie and about 200 hour long episodes that have impressive budgets and are entertaining in a sort of weird and entrancing way.

When watching, I always think about episodes I would make. The show's formulaic but the writing and situations are always interesting and sometimes very funny or witty, and they manage to come up with moral situations that are sticky as well. And if you can get ME to moralize, then you have to have some serious talent. Not that I am not sticky about morals in my way, quite the opposite, but I tend to make decisions instantly if it's an emergency and put them off without thinking about them at all until they reach emergency proportions if they aren't.

So if I were going to write an episode, should it be some avant garde pretentious crap that caters to the as yet unnamed phenomenon of hating anything popular? Hell no! Not that I don't hate most popular crap and am not a pretentious twit in general, but I enjoy being contrary. Which I guess is ironic and in a way am I not being contrary towards myself by bucking the trend in reverse just to be unlike the cool kids who intentionally bucked in in the first place? Am I rebelling against...myself?

At any rate, er, the other direction. Being popular is not really easy. Probably it's more about luck than anything; otherwise, all the sequel movies which try to be like the old movie combined with other popular movies would be insanely popular but though people go to a few sequels of good movies in general they don't like them nearly so much. So why try to break new ground at all? Why not take it to the ultimate, and steal something completely. Better yet, get paid to do it.

Instead of Duncan Mac Leod of the Clan Mac Leod I seen Ronald Mc Donald of the clan Mc Donald. Ronald teachs children the traditional Scottish values of self reliance, law and order, getting value for your money, and delicious apple pie and coffee served at a temperature kept legal for human consumption only by the herculean efforts of a massive and expensive legal team. There can be only one!

I can see it now:

Burger King (Played by Christopher Walken): Ho ho. Ha ha. Hee hee. Hee. I will charge just a dollar for my irresistable whoppers...but four dollars for the drinks. All summer long. My devious pricing scheme will bilk millions of hardearned dollars from my less money-savvy customers! Once again, I prove I AM the Burger King.

Ronald Mc Donald (Played by Ronald Mc Donald):

Store Owner: Wait, I can explain everything! Don't do this!

Ronald Mc Donald: I am Ronald Mc Donald of the clan Mc Donald. Ye have sworn fealty to the Burger-King, and now I'll have your head!

But I guess I didn't start this post to talk about Mc Donald's, or the highlander, but Robert Jordan and of course, to a greater extent, myself. As usual.

Now, for some reason mentioning you like Robert Jordan gets a lot of reaction along the lines of that mentioned above, as if it's too popular now so it all sucks. There's also the valid point that the stories move slower and slower until in the last few books the main character is all but a forgotten guy who barely gets mentioned except in the last few pages. Mostly, though, people are just absurd asses.

I mean, do harry potter and twilight suck just because they are unreasonably popular? No! I am ambivalent about harry potter, and don't get me wrong twilight sucks just not because it's popular. You can quantify just why twilight sucks and how ludicrous every single bit of it is, but its popularity had nothing to do with it sucking so much; that was due to glittering vampires alternately bizarrely skittering through trees and acting emo and literally posing to the camera for the entire movie.

So, I say unashamedly that I am a Robert Jordan fan. Though I guess now that I see it in print having three pages of qualifications and justification before saying this somewhat lessens the strength of the statement, but honestly that was just due to being perplexed about seeing how common it is to see Robert Jordan bashing.

And, the reason to mention that is because I was struck the other day that one of the characters reminded me of myself. Well, not in all respects because he was completely nuts and more than a little smelly and badly dressed, but in one respect anyway. There's this tense chase scene where The Good Guys are trying to catch the minor but well constructed villain Padan Fain for a bunch of complicated reasons.

They chase him for weeks on horseback and every day in the morning the course is northwest but thorught the day it goes more southwest. Every day, they think about trying to cut him off by going straight west but they don't dare try it for fear of losing him. It's actually a pretty gripping little drama that only makes sense later on when you see the other side of it.

As it turns out, Padan Fain (who's a bit mad and is slightly posessed), wakes up every morning confused and weak, lacking in will and kind of confused. So every morning, one of the other baddies would lead the band in one direction, but Padan would feel better and have more willpower throughout the day. By the night time he'd work himself up into a fever pitch until he collapsed from exhaustion after hours of...whatever.

Holy crap, that's me! It's like every day is a struggle, but in some nonobvious way. I always feel so confused and ill tempered in the morning, but even if I don't sleep the night before at all I always feel stronger and smarter by evening time, then by the end of the day almost euphoric and full of plans and doing work/projects or chatting someone to death on the phone and then suddenly it's like my brain just stops dead because I've worn it out and it's time to sleep. So, I guess I'm posessed. Or it could just be all the brain cells I stunned the night before slowly recover throughout the day.