The calm before the Air Show
Welcome to another edition of The Jumpstack! This week is all about stories of manly men, movies, mattresses, and the stories we tell about ourselves. Let’s jump in!
For whom the bell eventually tolls
I don’t like Ernest Hemingway. I’ve had my share of loud, shouty bros who can’t handle any situation in which they’re not the centre of attention, which is why he’s never held a place in my imagination of what it means to be a writer. (Walk into any bar & grill and you’ll find at least three Hemingway types playing the golf arcade game in the corner.) So of course, a story of Ol’ Ernie getting owned in a truly humiliating fashion is going to be a good one:
Morley Callaghan as the unassuming Canadian vector of karmic justice is what makes this legend divine. Adam Bunch is far more charitable in his retelling of the story than other versions I’ve heard, which have Fitzgerald purposefully prolonging the fight in order to make sure Hemingway got his just desserts.
One detail remains constant throughout: Ernest had pissed off everyone in the clique by the time this fight happened, and he never, ever got over it. Despite the many times that Hemingway tried to tell the story from his point of view in the following years, this was the one tale he could not revise to benefit himself.
Show, don’t tell
This essay about the professional issues in diagnosing discomfort, rather than explore what they are, it is a fascinating read on the stories about ourselves we choose to keep—even when they don’t serve us:
Conversely, when life problems are addressed only from within the impoverished terms set by a medicalized approach to distress, difficulties become concretized. We become locked in the narrow perspective of the story and cannot escape. Any treatment that takes a too literal approach is likely to strengthen that story, validating our own belief in our sickness and keeping us stuck. An overly concrete attitude toward our inner life causes petrification—as in a fairy tale, things harden and turn to stone.
Resilience requires the ability to change perception and adapt when needed, the ability to allow new experiences to alter or even contradict the stories we believe about ourselves, so that we may discover new strengths and skills.
While the word resilience has been co-opted by corporations and governments as spin for cutting employee insurance or education budgets, the concept itself should not be binned: resilience is inherently a deeply personal enterprise, and we should not cede it to any interested establishment, but pursue it for our own advantages.
Don’t call me “Junior”
Despite the fact they’re going to start production on the fifth Indiana Jones movie later this year, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade remains, in my opinion, the final movie of the franchise. I was an infant and toddler when the previous movies had come out: I vividly remember following the lead-up to the release of Last Crusade because it would be the first one that I’d be able to see in a theatre.
And, to my 8-year-old heart, it was everything: beautiful locales and religious lore mixed with incredible action scenes and slapstick comedy. So when Eric Veillette, executive programmer at the Revue, mentioned he was producing a “Summer of ‘89” series, I knew what title to claim for Throwback Cinema. But I had no idea how influential that summer was, until this:
…there was a magic in watching the Joker dance to Prince songs through downtown Gotham or in seeing Indy bicker with his dad as they fought the Nazis. The big money cash-grabs were what made 1989 big. But it was the quality stuff that made it memorable.
Flight of the mattresses
And now, an example of a failure to plan:
One of the upsides to having an indoor movie series is that I don’t have to consider the seats themselves throwing the screening into chaos.
But, with the right perspective, it would make one hell of a story.
And that’s it for The Jumpstack this week! If you liked it, why don’t you hit that heart and share it with your friends, and sign up for free for more delivered directly to your inbox every Tuesday? See you next week!
— Jump