Wednesday 6/9

This is an older post that got good feedback.  Enjoy!  (In case you missed it the first time around.)

Flat Line

Few incidents in life carry the potential to elicit as wide of an array of emotions as road kill.  It can be downright tragic and in other instances, wildly funny, but why?  And where do we draw the line?  For most of us, the accidental auto-slaughter of a golden retriever is heartbreaking whereas the tire-ironing of a common bullfrog may not be.  In fact, depending on the position of the poor frog, possibly arms and legs out-stretched, it may actually be funny.  For those who think all road kill is tragic, there is still an arguable range of sadness.  Surely, a family pet death evokes stronger emotion than that of a pan-caked raccoon. 

So what exactly is the spectrum of sadness involving road kill?  At first glance, it seems very straight forward.  Give anyone a list of animals and ask them to order them from comic to tragic.  With slight subjectivity, a collection of these lists would turn out very similarly.  We can all agree that the inadvertent expired existence of a human being is by far more depressing than a flattened field mouse.  A linear pattern certainly exists, but it’s more complicated than that.

Add a second dimension to the same question: the gore factor.  Clearly, some road kill is more gut-wrenching to observe than others.  Revisit the frog.  A paper thin amphibian with no entrails in sight most likely won’t make one avert their eyes.  What may be difficult for some is the suspension of laughter.  A poor, pulverized pit bull is not so funny.  Ask the same group of people to rate goriness and the results would probably be even more similar.  We now have a planar representation within which to plot our road kill emotional state.  If only it were that easy.

Our understanding could be enhanced with a third dimension, a fourth, a fifth, and so on.  Without going into much detail, we’ll hit a few of them.  There is the quantity factor.  For example, if one finds a paved possum humorous, then no doubt, two would be doubly so.  There is the delayed reaction factor.  Think skunk.  There are a multitude of others, blurring the delineation between comedy and tragedy:  the eye-contact factor, the trajectory factor, personal taste (maybe you hate Chihuahuas), the tread factor, the exotic factor, the collateral damage quotient, and etcetera.  Use your imagination. 

You will have to decide for yourself what tickles you and what doesn’t.  So for every squashed squirrel, Panini-ed pigeon, tread-ridden turtle, steam-rolled stray, and waffled weasel, laugh appropriately and mourn when meaningful.  Just be glad it wasn’t you.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Tuesday 6/8

Blogger was down much of the day, yesterday, so I was never able to get around to posting.  (Their server must have hit the 'snooze' button one too many times.)  But here's today's:

Wet Roads

I was watching one of my favorite movies recently and something caught my eye.  The good guys were chasing the bad guy down an alley (classic, huh?), and I noticed the pavement was all wet.  It hadn’t been raining, though.  I turned to my girlfriend and made a comment about it.  Her response was something along the lines of:

“Well, duh.  Streets are always wet in movies.  Everybody knows that.”

Well, everybody but me.  And you know what?  She’s right.

(It took a long time to find this picture, by the way.  It’s not a very search-friendly set of keywords.)  Now I can’t sit through a movie without looking for the doused driveways and soaked streets.  Wet roads are just a bit of movie know-how that has never reached me until now. 

The more I notice it, the more I realize just how much better certain scenes are with a sheet of water on the road.  Foot chases are better when feet go splashing through puddles.  Car chases are enhanced with some slipping and sliding (maybe some extra crashing, too).  And the bright-lit streets of New York just look good soaked.  (I think New York is the wettest city in showbiz.) 

So keep an eye out.  If you’re like me, you won’t be able to help but to see it (and expect it) every time you watch a movie. 

By: S. Cole Garrett

Friday 6/4

Lookin' Sharp

And here I thought scissors that could cut pennies were cool…

(Yes, this was a real advertisement.) 

(And yes, it's pretty cool.)

By: S. Cole Garrett