Gamechangers

Happy Feet.

Happy Feet.

Happy Feet.

It all seemed so natural, so rudimentary, so everyday.

It was so simple, so easy to surmise the premise, so effortless to outline the details.

It was all so normal.

This was Happy Feet for about 70 minutes. Just another day at the kids' shop. I threw it atop the massive pile of swell animated critter films that help us teach our kids tolerance.

And then BLAMMO!  Suddenly the rock below my feet can't be trusted. Where's my footing? What am I standing on? The world twisted itself into a sincerely confounding shred of surreally undefinable existence.

Just like that I've become a man without a past, because all my preconceptions of the reality I've been dwelling in are being ruthlessly torn asunder. Asunder!!

ASUNDER!!

Now!  A subtle little memory arises. A warning from the past.

Long ago my brother had foretold of such third act devastation from the Feet. He was unable to articulate it, only managing to blurt out some strange doctrine.  He recklessly cajoled that the film was some form of Jedi Communism. Yes, yes, he knew about this. He had witnessed it before. He came out of it alive. We can too. We can too. We can live through this dammit!

When the curtain finally, mercifully fell, all that was left in me was laughter. My brother saw something evil in Happy Feet's manipulated plot that was vitriolly against the very core of our souldom.   I, for one, found the subversive denouement as something so jarring that I couldn't help but appreciate it.  And so my response was laughter.  I could do nothing more.  There is no other response to the strangeness of life.

Happy Feet!  Well done you little devil, you.

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Last night, as a seasonal treat, I destined myself to undertake a watching of all The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes.

As I watched the Simpson quintet get levitated up into a spaceship, my thoughts became far too serious.  Far too serious, indeed.

Certain thoughts drove my brains to contemplate The Matrix, and the ominous words of Morpheus as he tells Neo that they have a policy of not 'unplugging' people after they pass a certain age.  Our feeble minds get so accustomed to our way o' life that gamechanging realities don't help us, they break us. The age-ed mind can only bend so far.

It's not that the spoon can't be bent, it's that our brains can't handle such bendation.

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Gamechanger: that which completely alters how you view and function in the world. An event/reality that comes to be known in a sudden way so that one's conception of existence significantly metamorphs.


Sidenote: Three cheers for Animorphs!

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The first time I was introduced to the concept of 'the Gamechanger' was in the preceding weeks to the Season 3 finale of Lost. 

The teasers kept shouting at me, "EVERYTHING IS ABOUT TO CHANGE!"

I miss Lost.  I miss that relationship.  Boy was that a humpty-dumpty of an ending.
My heart hasn't been the same since.

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I tried to think of any gamechangers in my life.

Being raised in a Christian household all my days, it would be a bit disingenuous to say that my acceptance of God's gift was a gamechanger. Giving my life to Jesus Christ is a lifesaver, no doubt, but since I never avidly lived under another banner of reality, I can't say it resculpted my life palette.

What does seem valid is the 911 attacks.  That changed America's sense of supremacy and invincibility.

For Slovenians, I would imagine the disintegration of Yugoslavia would count.

But both of those aren't as cool as the Alien Card.

Aliens seem like the biggest gamechanger possible (aside from the coming of Jesus -- Come Now, Lord!).

And the best thing about gamechangers is you can never predict quite how they'll change the game.

Just look at how wrong Dustin Hoffman's Dr. Norman Goodman's predictions were in the Michael Crichton adaptation of Sphere.  He was ill prepared for that gamechanger, I say, I say.

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ill prepared.