Fifteen Minutes: Thoughts on the Aurora Shooting

I may have even been reading a Batman digital comic on my iPhone when Amy first addressed the issue.

"The only people I know on Facebook who are talking about the shooting are my Arizona friends."

I don't think we even had a chance to talk about the massacre that took place at the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in the Denver area suburb of Aurora until we were seeing the movie ourselves.

There were very few people in the theater. The three people who accompanied me thought to explain this phenomena as a fear reaction to what happened. Having worked in a movie theater for three years, I was leaning toward the fact that you're not likely to pack a theater on a Wednesday evening in the middle of summer.

In the end, I think it's unclear. Do you, the reader, think that the shooting effected The Dark Knight Rises crowds negatively (fear reaction) or positively (a la Heath Ledger's death)?

We discussed some of the salient facts of the assailant James Holmes' story.

Some reported that his outfit - a gas mask and camouflage clothing - was reminiscent of the film's antagonist Bane. There were people in the theater who thought his appearance was part of the show. When I saw The Dark Knight in IMAX, a theater employee dressed as the Joker walked in, did his best impression, and asked us to kindly move toward the middle of our rows so others could find seats. Oh, and "Why so serious?" Back then, nobody would have thought to question the intentions of such a costumed individual.

I'd overheard that Holmes had begun calling himself The Joker, and this is why he appeared in court with his hair dyed. He had looked distant and unconcerned, making most of America wonder if he's a sociopath, plain and simple, with Dexter monologues repeating over and over in his head to tell him how to interact with the emotionally available. What intrigued our friend Garret and myself the most was that Holmes was apparently a Ph.D. student in neuroscience. Garret mentioned that he was studying brain pathology, which made us wonder aloud if everything that happened was some experiment meant to be explained in a Ph.D. dissertation.

As the opening credits began to roll, I leaned over and whispered: "They say it happened during a shoot-out fifteen minutes into the movie."

Fifteen minutes.

As it turns out, I was so captivated by The Dark Knight Rises that I wasn't thinking about whether or not a killer would enter our theater when the fifteen-minute mark rolled around. I guess I have something in common with the people in the Aurora theater. Amy later pointed it out that the fifteen minute mark probably would have corresponded with a shoot-out involving Selina Kyle and Bane's crew in a pub. But by that point it was clear that we had escaped the terrible fate that would have come down were a detail-oriented copycat to target that Grand Rapids theater.

I will admit that later on I had a moment of terror. Seemingly beyond my control, I found my gaze shifting slowly to the left, from the screen to a bright EXIT sign aside the screen. That's where he would have entered the theater, I thought. But my mind drifted further. If I were a copycat, I'd come in the same way other movie-goers come in. I'd use the element of surprise. At that moment, a man stepped into the theater and it looked like he was staring directly at me. There was no way he could have seen me in the dark auditorium, but I was frightened nonetheless.

I imagine that I am not the only impressionable viewer who felt that kind of fear at some point watching The Dark Knight Rises. Maybe my crew was right to predict empty theaters and plummeting box office sales. Prior to this man entering the theater, I had taken my own bathroom break, and I had potentially re-entered the theater to the dismay of one of my fellow viewers.

I sit safely in front of a computer in a duplex in Lowell, pondering the repercussions of James Holmes on our world. As I type my first draft of this post, it occurs to me that James Holmes himself might be doing the same thing from some prison cell somewhere in the Denver metropolitan area.

Guano (Huge Bat-Related Crap)

I open up the Facebook application on my iPhone. It takes a really long time and I'm still not completely certain all of my notifications have loaded properly. As I read the updated status of a certain "Optimistic" friend from my favorites list, it feels as if something is caught in my throat. He writes, "Geeeesh. I just ignored a spoiler warning and spoiled one of the biggest shockers in pop culture history. Dang me." I become frightened, wondering if I might stumble upon this same tidbit in much the same way while hoping that this friend is not doomed to eternal dangnation for his transgression. Shortly thereafter I receive a group text from a similarly named individual with a simple warning: "Warning: Stay away from ALL comic-related web sites and beware spoiler warnings. HUGE bat-related crap just went down today. I recommend getting caught up on the Batman title." (Editor's note: While I have edited these quotes for capitalization, punctuation, and a few other things, I have left the original phrase "bat-related crap" intact despite the word "guano" being a much better fit.)

Nary a "comic-related web site" have I visited since these grave warnings on Wednesday (comic book day), June 13, 2012, despite having caught up on "the Batman title" in question. I now understand what "Optimistic" (for your ease, just consider this analogy - "Optimistic" is to Justin Tiemeyer, the publisher of Cavemen Go as "Deep Throat" is to Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and the American public) was referring to when he spoke of "one of the biggest shockers in pop culture history," and because I don't want anyone else to tread the obsidian path of doom that my friend recently walked I'm going to warn you now not to read this post if you don't want the great Bat-secret spoiled for you as well.

Community Project: Dreams Come True

It's been a little while since I've posted anything of value. In October, my computer crashed, and I used that opportunity to get away from blogging every day. The spark had left my posts, I felt, and maybe some time away would free me from the chains I had placed on myself: publish or perish, publish or perish, publish or perish. In December I devoted myself to frantically completing my Arnold 365 on YouTube and posting those videos on Cavemen Go. I now have two copyright violation strikes against my YouTube account. If I don't remove everything that violates someone's copyright, the third strike will spell the end of my YouTube account which has a few originals that I'm proud of with a lot of hits. At the beginning of 2012, I thought I'd write more meaningful pieces. I wanted to care about what I was writing. I wanted my people to care about what I was writing about. And I wanted publishers to care about what I was writing about. But I didn't, which makes it impossible for anyone else to care.

I've spent about half of a year away from this blog, and it may continue on and off until I can get back on my feet completely. Inspired by blogs like Chad and Rodney's Political Jesus and Kristin's As Luck Would Have It, I've had my eye on ways that I can involve the community with this blog. I'm not quite ready to give up control and have guest bloggers, though I imagine that might happen in the future, but I am ready to engage the community through a series of community projects. Who wants to hear what I have to say as if I'm some sort of expert of taste, anyways? I've tried to wear that hat, and it is just full of way too much hubris. The voice that speaks as if it is the most knowledgeable is not a voice I care to listen to. I want my posts to be part of a conversation. Rather than Justin Tiemeyer as Cavemen Go, I want to be Justin Tiemeyer, part of the Cavemen Go community. And this is why I have decided to begin a series of community projects.

The first community project is titled, "Dreams Come True." The first thing my mind jumps to when I hear that title is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, followed by some similar rhetoric that has been used by the Obama administration. I don't imagine that King's speech was actually based on an actual dream that he awoke from in a sweat, however. I imagine that he worked long hours, awake the entire time, in order to understand what needed to happen to the United States of America, to author a speech that would engage its populace, and to outline a practical guide to making this happen. A dream is both an intentional action that embodies hope and the future and an accidental event that happens while one is sleeping. I think that the "Dreams Come True" community project will embody both of these.

STEP ONE: MAKE MY DREAM COME TRUE

I had a dream the other night that my girlfriend and I visited our friends in New York City. When we were packing up to leave NYC and return to Grand Rapids I found three drawings done by my good friend Elliot Mayo of the blog Elliot Mayo among my personal items. He had apparently drawn them for me and ripped them from his sketchbook so that I could take them with me.

The first was Batman's iconic flying vehicle, the Batwing, not to be confused with the African superhero of the same name.

The second was Elliot's interpretation of the cover of the cover of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1.

The third drawing was just a funny doodle, something an artist in high school might draw in a yearbook in order to prevent saying something like, "Have a great summer."

How can you make this dream come true for me? Well, if you're not artistic, I suggest going over to Elliot's blog and petitioning him to do some sketches for the "Dreams Come True" community project. If you are artistic, then by all means send me your version of these three drawings. Put your own flair on the generic descriptions and send me some pictures for the blog at cavemengoblog@gmail.com, the official e-mail of Cavemen Go. I'll be sure to feature your pictures on the blog, and maybe I can even do a feature on you some time.

STEP TWO: MAKE YOUR DREAM COME TRUE

Tell me a little about your dreams. You can leave these little tidbits either in the comments section of this post or in the blog's inbox at cavemengoblog@gmail.com. I just have a couple of qualifications. First, I would prefer if the dreams you speak of are actual dreams. You may note that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "dream" wouldn't fit this description and that it was more than worthy of making real, and I'll agree, but that's not exactly the aim of this project. Second, I would prefer that the dreams occurred recently. Sometimes if you had a dream a long time ago you can add a whole lot of extra rational stuff to it when it was naturally kind of irrational. I want this project to capture the beauty of the irrational and unexpected nature of dreaming. And finally, I would prefer that the dreams you had seem like something that could happen in real life. We want to make those dreams come true, after all.

Ready. Set. Go.

Dueling Carls

If you're expecting a description of a sexual act, you will be unhappy. Dueling Carls is entirely child friendly.

The Vortex Cannon

A couple of weekends ago Amy and I enlisted the help of a few of her friends to pick up a gigantic dresser from Amy's parents' house, only to create an accidental meeting of the minds. Conversations moved fluidly from one topic to another, experiments with the creation of gun powder and thermite, burning out dead stumps and creating massive canons with high arcing flames, the sorts of things you might hear of on a televised science program.

The discussion eventually lead to something that Cliff had discovered on the internets, something called a vortex cannon which created a powerful blast - strong enough to knock stacked polystyrene cups over at a distance of thirty feet - simply using air compression in an empty cardboard box. Surely this science experiment will soon be on the docket for this intelligent group of twenty-somethings.

Perhaps we will even weaponize it in time to use it against the oncoming zombie apocalypse. Only time will tell.

I give you the vortex cannon:

Chameleon Was Frightened By iPhone

A couple of weeks ago, Amy and I went to a get together on my side of the family. If you had seen us there, surrounded by enraptured children, you'd think we were storytellers reading off lines from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol - which I found the other day at Good Will on cassette as read by Patrick Stewart - when in fact we were watching funny YouTube videos on our iPhones.

My cousin Ethan tried to carry on the tradition of showing funny videos this Easter by pulling up a video of a cat who drinks out of the toilet, uses the toilet for a bowel movement, and finally falls into the toilet while trying to escape. The bad news is that the cat was not trained to flush the toilet; the good news is that the cat was apparently trained to drink out of the toilet before taking a dump instead of after.

I digress. The following is one of the videos from the original family fun fest. I believe the title explains everything.

Crazy Cat Medley

And now something that has nothing to do with anything.