The Pontification Situation

I remember, during a graduate school seminar, discussing an article
about a group of writers who went about the scientific process of
deconstructing the plots of Michael Crighton-like thrillers with the
goal of assembling the story elements necessary to create a best
seller. They identified a number of rules, most of which I can't
remember, like "the villain will have a predilection for puzzles" and
"a member of the hero's team will die horribly in the second act."

The apocryphal result was that these writers, who had previously been
struggling to publish anything, then sold their Frankenbook for a
multi-million dollar advance.

There is a business plan in there somewhere. I'll keep you posted.

Biff Pow Zat!

So, following up on the Olympics reality check, it's an appropriate
coincidence that the last Batman movie just came out. I haven't seen
it yet, but every time the character is discussed I'm reminded of
something I read once along the lines of "until they are about 30,
every guy secretly believes that if he devoted the next five years of
his life to Kung-fu and crime fighting, he could actually become
Batman."

What's funny is that, when you picture that idea in your head, it
actually seems a lot less absurd than the reverse: if Batman had to
do all the things in the average person's day. Batman with a
Baby-Bjorn, rocking back and forth in front of a Lakers game, ignoring
requests to do the dishes. Batman sitting through his quarterly
evaluation ("At target for efficiency. Opportunity for increased
development of customer service skills")

No, Batman cannot be a self-taught ninja-detective-badass and still be
someone's mid-level employee. Can't ever be accountable to anyone at
all, actually. The schema just won't fit.

Sure, you can have superheroes who schlep through a day job getting
chewed out by their boss (e.g. Peter Parker, at least until he married
a supermodel). But those characters are inevitably bumped into their
super humanity by a bolt of dumb luck. Radioactive spiderendiptiy.
They are who we think we could be in our lives if we just caught a
break.

But Batman is who we say to ourselves we could be if we just cast
aside our family and the rest of our petty human pursuits and devoted
ourselves to lives of precise and unwaivering vengeance. And a cool
black shirt just like Steve Jobs.

Hard Truths

At the close of every Olympics I go through the theoretical exercise
of assessing what sports, if I abandoned the whole of my life to the
pursuit, I could have any hope of competing in four years from now.
This time the list is down to fly fishing and darts.