Family Visit, Obscure Time Travel Theories Discussed over Dinner, and Luciano

So, because of my neglect of this wonderful website, I have many things to report today in the wee hours of the morning. For the past week or so, my uncle and three cousins from my mom's side have been visiting with us here. They arrived in the early hours of Wednesday morning last week (so not two days ago but the week before) and they just left this Thursday after a breakfast of cinnamon rolls, eggs, and Wesley's famous bacon.
As always, their stay was fun and very easygoing - I always pick up conversations with my cousins as though they had never been gone (which says something, as I am bad about using the telephone and we only correspond occasionally on Facebook). If something negative were to be said about it, it would only be that when you are our age (high school age) it seems that there are fewer things to do as a group than when you are all in elementary school or younger. It is harder for an adolescent to use boredom constructively and create a game from whatever resources abound in the current environment. So, when I had a random desire to play Charades, for instance, I was left to "wish in one hand and sh!^ in the other and see which one filled up faster," or however the saying goes. Haha.
In any case, one of the things of the most event that we did while they were here was to drive out to Durham to visit my grandfather at the Super 8 Motel which he inhabits and where he is employed. We had gotten excited a few days before when we were at the hot guy movie store, and we had mistakenly rented three movies, of which we only watched two. The leftover movie was "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," and I was the only person in the group who hadn't yet seen this movie. So, we stopped by the movie store before departing for Durham, renewed the movie, and drove to the Super 8 with our DVD player and intentions of watching the film at some point while we were there. Upon our arrival, we were given two keys for our own rooms - we took the ground floor room and the cousins and Uncle Alan took the room which happened to be directly above ours. We dawdled around my grandfather's room for a while, admiring the absurdly-obese bird which lives in a cage beside his bed; this bird's name is Lita, and it apparently lives on a diet of chicken and Coca-Cola - the last time that we were visiting my grandfather, my mom engaged him in a discussion about the moral implications of a bird eating a fellow bird. My grandfather insisted, "She likes it! Don't you, Lita?" Lita said nothing.
After hanging out for a while and taking a few pictures of everyone with the baby, we all packed into cars again and traveled to the Golden Corral, where we always eat when we congregate with my grandfather - it has become an odd sort of tradition, despite the fact that no one especially loves it or anything. My grandpa, however, does know just about the entire staff there, and so there is no fear of having our food spat upon. That is always a plus.
Dinner was great, and we left the restaurant feeling a little too full (as one always does when one leaves a Golden Corral). We dawdled some more around our rooms and then finally gathered in Grandpa's room, hooked up the DVD player, and played the movie.
After we were finished watching the movie, I could see why everyone was perfectly willing to watch it a second time for me - it was "excellent," to say the least. It was definitely a stereotypical 80's movie, sure - but it had historical context (I know that you learn doodley-squat from the actors about history, but they sneak in clever little references none the less). One thing that I particularly enjoyed, even if it is not realistic, was the reactions of the various "historical figures" upon being kidnapped for their use in the end-of-year History project - like when they are able to lead Socrates happily from his seminar because Keanu Reeves "philosophises" with him. And when they simply lift Beethoven from his piano bench in the middle of a performance of "Fur Elise." Napoleon might have been my favorite character, though it is hard to say. . .I liked how childishly he reacted to everything, from the ice cream to the water slides. They took a notorious dictator and turned him into something ridiculous, which was wrong but amusing at the same time.
In any case, this movie prompted a very interesting discussion about time travel over our dinner at Tequila a few days after the movie. The scene that was the source of the discussion was the scene in which Bill and Ted are standing outside of the Circle K and are confronted with future representations of themselves, who give them advice about their upcoming "adventure," and then move on to the near future. When you think about it, this moment is trippy in more ways than one: the first reason is, obviously, because they are talking to themselves, but the second is that the way in which they talk to themselves (and when they do it again later in the movie, coming back from the past) implies that this meeting of themselves in front of the Circle K is an infinite ordeal and will keep happening and happening and happening to satisfy the return of the future Bill and Ted from the past. That was probably gibberish. What I mean is that the Bill and Ted who are receiving the advice will inevitably give the advice to the next round of Bill and Ted, who will in turn give the advice to the next Bill and Ted in front of the Circle K, and so on forever. This means that, if this sort of time travel were really possible, the Tralfamadorian perspective on time expressed in Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s book Slaughterhouse Five would be correct; even if one were dead, one would still be alive at some point in time, because that moment always has, always did, and always will exist. It is a cycle.
Most of what we were talking about, however, were various theories on what time travel would be if it did exist - the Ray Bradbury "if-you-crush-a-butterfly-in-the-past-you-dramatically-affect-the-future" perspective versus the "nothing-would-happen-because-the-butterfly-was-crushed-and-always-will-be-crushed" perspective. And then we listed the counter example that disproved both theories, which was this: If you go back in time and kill your grandfather, you never would have been able to go back in time in the first place, because you don't exist!
So, our conversation was very interesting and nerdy.
Now for Luciano, who is my most recent bit of news (despite the news that today I have finished learning Bach's "Invention 14," which means that I know 2 Bach pieces and I shall eventually progress to Goldberg Variation 15, which I dreamt of playing on a certain Steinway). The other day, my mom, Kalyn, and I were sitting on my mom's bed, about to read a story. I opened up the book that I had recently brought back over from my dad's house. The book was The Rainy Day Picnic and it was a Minnie Mouse book - just inside the front cover was a little printed thing which said, "This book belongs to Minnie's best friend:" with a space for Minnie's best friend. In the space was scrawled the name "Luciano," in untidy handwriting, and just above it, barely legible, was written a phone number. The five in the number was written backwards.
I was somehow moved by that backwards five. I wondered if, somehow and unknowingly, when I was little, I had taken this book from a boy who thought that he was Minnie Mouse's best friend. I would very much like to call the number, despite the fact that the book is old and Luciano might be in his fifties now - and despite the fact that he probably lives elsewhere and doesn't care. I've never spoken to anyone named Luciano before; I think that this is also a motivating factor. But I suppose that I probably won't call him - I'll keep his treasured book forever, or until Kalyn donates it to another kid who will wonder who Luciano is. I suppose not all moments can be like that scene in "Amelie" where she returns the treasure chest of sorts to an aged-forty-years Bretodeau. A Minnie Mouse book isn't quite so significant as that. By the way, I got my cousins to watch "Amelie," and they enjoyed it a lot, though they found the characters (particularly Amelie) to be creepy. I think that, at most, they are awkward and shy, which makes them all the more likeable and human. That's how all characters in movies should be - likeable and human. Is that too much to ask, Hollywood?

"Breakfast of Champions" or "Goodbye Blue Monday" - a Review

So many moons have passed since I've devoted an entire entry on here to a book review, but the book that I have just read demands such attention. This book, which is labelled by both of the titles listed above, is written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., one of America's most famous satirists, and was written later in his life, as opposed to his earlier novel Slaughterhouse Five, which deals with the bombing of Dresden, Germany and for which he is praised the most.
As far as the synopsis of the book goes, it centers around the pivotal meeting of its two main characters, Dwayne Hoover (who is a "fabulously well-to-do" Buick salesman) and Kilgore Trout (who is a poor science fiction writer with an "iron will to live"). At the time of their meeting, Hoover is well into a mysterious madness, inflicted by "bad chemicals" in his brain - as is explained by the author, Hoover's meeting with Trout and visual ingestion of one of his books provide him with the "bad ideas" that, mingling with the chemicals, provoke Hoover to go completely off of his rocker. The entire book builds up to this point, and discusses the consequences many times (no, there is no vague foreshadowing at all in this book).
Through the development of Trout's character (and through the synopses of the character's published works), Vonnegut takes satirical stabs at the degradation of America and the world through industrialization, pollution, and human greed. In the very first chapter of the book, Vonnegut discusses the "dying planet" on which Trout and Hoover live. At one point in the book, Trout crosses a river by foot, which has been polluted by runoff from a nearby factory - as he steps from the water, an odd type of plastic substance solidifies on his feet.
Vonnegut also uses Trout to convey that ideas can be very dangerous, the example in the book being the idea expressed in one of Trout's stories that all human beings are really "fully-automated robots," which is the idea that eventually sends Hoover over the edge and into his madman frenzy.
It is an interesting and very valid theory, particularly because it applies to why I read the book in the first place.
My mother's friend, who recommended the book to me, falsely informed me that Conor Oberst, a singer from a band that I used to love (and still like, but not with as much. . .intensity), played the character of Bunny Hoover, Dwayne Hoover's son, in the film adaption of the novel. Intrigued, I walked over to the computer and watched the Youtube video of the trailer that he had pulled up for my viewing entertainment. Luckily for him, the image of Bunny was so fleeting that I was fooled into thinking that it actually was Conor Oberst. Vaguely interested by the outline of the plot presented in the commercial, I picked up the book, sat down, opened it, and finished it in two days - which is a record for me. It wasn't until the day after I finished the book that I discovered that my mom's friend had lied - so I suppose that if it hadn't been for Conor Oberst, I would never have read the book in the first place!
Though the two main characters are what would be ordained polar opposites in normal terms, I think that the author tries to unite them in their "Awareness" of the world and in their perception of the roles that they play. Trout, for example, is the victim of poverty and scorn - his books are mangled by the publishers to the point that they almost never sell - and he is very aware of the tragic state of the world that he lives in. At one point, talking to his pet parakeet, Bill, Trout inquires about his purpose, about how he wonders if he were put onto the Earth as some sort of test of Man's endurance. Then there is Dwayne Hoover who, despite being fabulously well-to-do, has gone insane. His wife has committed suicide, his son detests him, and he is constantly paranoid that those around him are intent on manipulating him for his money (which happens a few times in the book). In turn, Hoover relates to his mistress, Francine Pefko, an anecdote about his trip to a car factory - and the room entirely devoted to the "destructive testing" of automobiles - and he also wonders aloud if his purpose on Earth is for God to see how much a man can take before he breaks.
As for the development of minor characters, Vonnegut utilizes a very interesting, innovative degrees-of-separation technique, where he will digress from the main plot to fill in the personalities of surrounding, supposedly-minor characters, like the waitress, Fanny (I think that's her name) at Burger Chef, who is only in the plot long enough to wait on Dwayne, and who yet has her entire life story told for the enlightenment of the reader. In this manner, Vonnegut makes the fictional town of Midland City that much more plausible because of the roundness of all of its inhabitants as characters.
Now, for my favorite thing about the book: its form of narration. The perspective is third-person omniscient, though while most books told in the third-person omniscient have narrators which aren't characters, Vonnegut uses this perspective to serve his role as his own deus ex machina in the climax of the book. Though he implies frequently that there is a Creator of the Universe higher than him, he takes full credit for being the Creator of the literary universe of Midland City, which is a really neat concept. For almost half of the book, it is like any other third-person omniscient narrative, but then it changes drastically as the action escalates - Vonnegut places himself, disguised, in the same room as his characters as they are about to come together, to witness the event that he had decided in advance would occur. In the end, he confronts one of his characters (won't say which one) to inform him of what is happening. I can't get over how awesome this is.
Like most film adaptions of things, the film was awful, with the exclusion of one ridiculous line that made it quite hilarious: "I think my daddy loves me!" - I won't describe the circumstances of the quote - read the book and watch the movie for yourself! Taylor Lautner is in it! (Just kidding)
So in any case, out of five stars, I'd give this book 12 - if they are for nothing else, they are for the innovation of the narration and character development, though I love the plot also and how trivial it might have been, had it been written by anyone other than the master of satire himself.