"Black Tap and the Experience Illusion"

So aside from the film industry, I am in the business of creating positive guest experiences through hospitable Storytelling. At the Biltmore Hotel in Miami, Florida, we create experiences that are so impactful, the guest is compelled to share their story with someone else via word of mouth or social media. Retrieving these positive stories is only possible through our commitment to serve with deep empathy and passion. The Biltmore has an outstanding product that demands outstanding service, else that product would be devalued. The stories we create are only as good as our service. If a guest reads a great story about our Fontana restaurant, decides to try it out, but receives terrible service, the experience is disparaged. Experts say we are living in an "Experience Economy", where experiences outweigh mere services and goods; but after what I witnessed last weekend, I believe we are moving towards a "Social-Experience Economy", where the digital experience is more profound than the live one. However, does this make the experience worth paying for?

Black Tap

Last weekend I was in New York City with my family. My sister had been psyched to try this place called Black Tap Craft Burgers and Shakes (+Black Tap) ever since she started following them on Instagram and saw them on Buzzfeed. They had been posting pictures of their food for a while and have become known for their gourmet burgers and decorative milk shakes. Even the Weeknd showed up... but not during our weekend. Sorry. His name... I had to.

The Weeknd enjoying his Cookie Shake +Black Tap 

Their social marketing campaign proved successful the moment we arrived. If we wanted a much-desired seat in this SOHO sweet spot, we'd have to wait in a two-and-a-half hour line just to get in. Two-and-a-half-hours, folks. As my wife's students would ask #isthisreallife?

Five of us, plus my two-year-old daughter, committed to this line. Anyone who attempts this with a two-year-old should check themselves into a mental hospital. Luckily, we have the coolest daughter on the planet and she held up for that long. So many times we contemplated just skipping the line, but something about the experience compelled us to stay (blame those Instagram filters). We wanted to try those decorative milkshakes, we stared at and discussed Black Tap's social media pages) and the closer we were the more the anticipation grew. (My wife would like me to point out that she was highly-absolutely-positively against this line from the beginning and even suggested other restaurants.) But the rest of us knew that the great reviews, the amazing pictures, and the long lines couldn't be wrong about this place.

Finally our time came, just under the two hour mark (how cool were we)! We were escorted into the pub and seated at the bar. They had hooks for our bags and outlets to charge our phones. There was a full bar with local craft beers. Amazing right? With our stomachs grumbling, our two-year-old breathing a sigh of relief to finally get to color, and our phones plugged in to ensure enough battery life to socially document every detail, we perused the menu and prepared to order. With all of the hype about this place we assumed the service was going to be top notch, but to our surprise, the service was mediocre and disorganized. It took us another 15 minutes just to order after waiting so long. My wife asked the waitress if she liked a certain burger and she just shook her head and said in a non-caring voice, "I don't know, I haven't had it." It was clear that, in order to keep up with the high demand, the company sacrificed service, the most important part of the experience. 

All the food needed to be ordered at the same time (drink, apps, meal, and shake) so the server would only need to touch the table once in order to move on to the next batch of suckers-- I mean customers. In my case this meant that they brought out my beer, appetizer, entree, and gourmet shake all at the same time. You had guests having to choose to enjoy their delicious craft beer or eat their meal, or dive into their milkshake before it all melted away because of the restaurant's lack of organization. I mean, it was all over the place. When my wife caught sight of the on-coming milkshake (which was making its way to us before our burger salads), she quickly asked our waitress if the milkshake could wait. After all, if a toddler catches sight of a gigantic ice-cream sculpture oozing with chocolate chips, how much of her dinner do you think she'll have? That's right: none. Plus add that to the tantrum thrown when said mountain of ice-cream is placed before her and we enforce that she should finish her meat patty. Yeah, as my wife would say, "hell no." Luckily, the young woman making the shakes caught sight of our anxious faces and held off on the shake (she later confided in us that she did this because she, too, is a parent).  

Finally, the big moment came: Black Tap Shake Time. After the ooh's and aah's of our dessert's entrance, I quickly realized the shake was mostly whipped cream and chocolate syrup. The straw was too short to start drinking it because the whipped cream was overflowing. I tried taking a sip at first and got smothered by the white foam. I started digging through this sugary mountain just so I could taste the shake. It had an ice cream sandwich stuck on the glass which was nice to toss in the shake, but then I lost all of the whipped cream in the after splash. The chocolate chip cookie was good... my daughter certainly liked it... but was it worth the two-hour wait and bad service? Besides, trying to drink this thing was ridiculous and we could have saved two hours by just ordering the shake to go and avoiding the $15 worth of  decorative glass.

The burgers were good, but not worth the wait. The space was poorly utilized as most of their downstairs tables were open (possible hype-tactic?). The company clearly did not know how to function with large volumes. The experience was downgraded to meet the high demand rather than upgraded to keep customers coming back.

Social-Experience

So many people were snapping photos of their food and posting them online, including my party. I asked my brother about his experience and he said that his burger was delicious, but he would never come back. This was a one time thing. He tried to justify the bad service however, saying that my expectations were too high for just a bar. Maybe he is right but in my experience, it's the service that changes the game from "one-time-thing" to loyal customer. 

It's amazing how much money people spend on the illusion of an experience. They see others post photos of these shakes and make the decision that they are worth standing in line for because participating in the online experience with others is attractive. To my disappointment, they were just shakes. In the experience economy, the consumer's experience is all that matters. Within the social-experience economy, however, it is about the illusion, something that acts as a social media status changer. The illusion experience makes the food taste better because your mind believes it has to be this good. The experience of posting it online and sharing it with celebrities like the Weeknd is what satisfies the consumer more than the actual product and service does. And to contribute to the social-experience economy, I've had more satisfaction writing this blog than actually eating at Black Tap. They got me. The big question is what will happen to the service industry if consumers only care about the illusion more than the live experience? Will the stories about the illusion become more impactful than the stories of genuine service? Instagram and Snapchat may have proven they have.

In case I wasn't clear, Black Tap is not worth the wait... but if you wanna chance it and participate in the social-experience it provides then be sure to grab a slice of pizza while you are in line and remember to not bring a toddler!

P.S. Miami Locals will enjoy Spring Chicken much more than Black Tap with no wait, tastier food, and decent shakes! 
If you are a carnivore and are looking for a good burger joint, check out my buddies blog! Burgersandtech.com

How the Film "Inside Out" Increases Emotional Intelligence

I started writing this review last summer and never finished it because I didn't feel like I was on the right track. Initially I wanted it to be about how the film portrayed a false message; emotions control you. I wasn't satisfied with what I was writing, so instead of analyzing my work, I pushed it aside and tried not to think about it. When it came out on iTunes last November, I thought about writing it again, but still pushed it aside. When it won the Oscar for best animated feature this year, I again thought about getting back into this review. It kept coming to my mind, but nothing came of it.

I lost my connection to the film...until last week. During a training program I was leading I had my group take an emotional intelligence test. Emotional Intelligence is defined simply as the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions. I forgot I had a clip from "Inside Out" in my presentation under the heading "Emotions Work Together". I added it to the slideshow immediately after I saw the film last summer, but never played it for a group because we would usually run out of time. This particularly class was ahead of schedule though, so I played it. It was the concluding scene of the film where Riley,12, comes back home from running away and reveals to her parents how much she missed her old life in Minnesota. She embraces her sadness fully for the first time in her life and breaks down.

As I was watching this clip, I started to remember the films's impact on me a year ago...and started to cry! In front of the entire training group here I was, their leader, crying my eyes out. It was my "Puppy in a Cup" moment. Luckily, some of the women were crying too.

But as my lip quivered for the fourth time, it came to me. I repressed writing this blog just as Riley repressed the emotion of sadness. The movie is about repression not about how your emotions control you. Repressing an emotion is just as bad as allowing your emotions to govern your actions, which is why I always cry at the end of the film "Warrior".

Emotional Intelligence
Emotions can get the best of us, not only at a young age as they are developing. Adults repress emotions all the time allowing them to build up and explode over the most innocent of victims, like a sweet old lady or your two year old daughter after she asks you to play "Let it Go" for the one millionth time. We will give into these repressed emotions at one point because the load to is too heavy. This is where emotional intelligence comes in.

Emotional Intelligence is something you can begin practicing now and "Inside Out" provides a visual guide to help you achieve it. There are five stages to developing EI (Emotional Intelligence); Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Self-Motivation, Interpersonal Communication, and Emotional Mentoring. I want to focus on just the first two, SelfAwareness and Self-Management, to make my point in this review, but encourage you to read Emotional Intelligence 2.0 to help you achieve a higher emotional quotient for your own personal development.

Self-Awareness
Self-Awareness is the most important step. It involves simply becoming aware of what you are feeling and allowing yourself to feel an emotion physically. You cannot repress the emotion, which is what Riley was doing for the first two acts of the film. She repressed Sadness, I use a capital "S" because emotions are characters in this film. Sadness was being repressed by Joy the entire movie. Joy did not allow Sadness to help Riley through her daily life. Sadness became a repressed emotion for her. On her first day at a new school though, that emotion exploded.

While Riley was introducing herself in class, she had a "sadness spurt". Overwhelmed by Joy's  pressure to constantly fill Riley with happiness, a wave of sadness came flooding in. She started to cry in front of her class mates about how much she missed her old life (Puppy in a Cup Again). Even Sadness, the character, said she had no control over what she was doing when she started turning all of Riley's bright yellow joyful memories into soft blue sad ones.

It sounds childish, but is actually very accurate to what happens internally when we repress an emotion. I am a very patient person, but my patience comes with emotional repression. I grew up repressing my thoughts and feelings because I was never taught otherwise. I've seen my brother repress his anger for years at some of our family members because he was never taught how to handle emotional crises.

Several months ago I saw a father scald his 8 month old son for crying at the zoo. He lifted his son off the floor and said, "Stop crying! Men don't cry!" Sadly, this parenting mentality still exists and teaches children to repress their feelings at an early age. No wonder men have so many commitment issues!

Self-Awareness is all about feeling. There is nothing wrong with feeling an emotion, even if that emotion is fear or anger. The whole point of feeling the emotion is so you can decide the appropriate response to it. If you cannot feel an emotion you cannot react to it properly. Think of a glove and a needle. Have you ever tried to sew with a glove on? It makes it very difficult to thread the needle because you cannot feel it. We tend to wear emotional gloves over our hearts that make it difficult for us to thread the needle of our emotional responses. Consistent repression leads to emotional numbness and this is what happens to Riley when her emotions go out the tube... literally they go out a tube and into another facet of her brain.

Self-Management
As Riley's emotional numbness sinks in, she starts making poor decisions and acts out of character. She talks back to her parents, she steals her mother's credit card, and ultimately tries to run away. She begins to lack Self-Management. Plainly stated, Self-Management is the ability to manage your emotions, control impulses, and shake off bad moods. If Self-Awareness is the  needle, then Self-Management is the hand croqueting your emotional decisions. Without this technique, it is very difficult to act decisively.

I always see a pattern when I give others their emotional intelligence test. Many have high self-awareness scores, but low self-management scores. There is a connection between the two because the more you allow yourself to feel the more emotions you will have to manage appropriately with increasing difficulties. If we are an open door to emotions then we must learn to sleep on big emotional decisions before making them. Riley is an emotional door because she is a child. Children are still learning how to respond to emotions and that is why they take over her so often. Joy tries to become the ultimate emotional manager for Riley, but ends up repressing other emotions that don't make Riley happy rather then manage each individual crises.

Emotional Dictators

Why does it seem like the emotions are controlling the characters? Because there exists a lack of self management here especially within the adults. Riley's dad showcases this when he loses his temper with her over dinner. Without much conflict he allows his anger to control his decisions when Riley talks back. The emotionally intelligent thing to do would have been for him to ask why she was acting out of character rather than allowing his anger to fuel hers. The film can be read that our emotions control us and there is nothing we can do about it.

However, we are not our emotions. We are so much more than that. Emotions can be great enablers for our lives, but they are not the final decision maker in our lives. There is something higher that allows us to freely choose to act on an emotion or surpass it, just like desires. If we ate overtime we felt a little hungry then we would be eating all the time. If we had sex overtime we felt the urge, we would be in a lot of trouble. We have to learn how to control desires and most of us can do that.

Emotions are no different than those desires. We first must ask ourselves where is the emotion coming from, what am I feeling, and most importantly,  why am I feeling it? Emotions are not the dictators in your brain, if that were the case you would be enslaved by them. You know people in your lives who are enslaved by emotions.

Conclusion
I really enjoyed this film from the inside out. I even liked how the emotions themselves had emotions. It showcases a world of intrinsic beauty inside each human person. I believe watching this film with your child and explaining it to them opens up the door for a natural and authentic relationship about emotions and the things they are feeling. A child may use this film as an excuse whenever they act out of anger though. So, they must be taught that feeling anger is okay, but they have the choice to manage it rather than repress it. And you must provide them with the tools to do so.

Further reading on Inside Out and Emotional Intelligence

Sara Bareilles’ recent single comes from her new musical “Waitress”, with it’s story adapted from the 2007 award-winning Indie Film. The musical centralizes on a waitress, who strategizes a way to leave her abusive husband, but finds herself pregnant with his child in the planning process. With an innate talent for conceptualizing and baking beloved pies for her patrons, her identity lies sandwiched between her impressive pastry skills and the cowardly use of a man who can’t love. 

The song “She Used to be Mine” is the musical’s ballad baked into a melodic pie of brutal self reflection. Whether you have seen the movie or listened to the tracks released on Bareilles' new album, “She Used to be Mine” attempts to pry open that emotional coffin you buried a piece of your soul in. 

I’ll give you four minutes to listen to the song… 

Now here is a breakdown of how it relates to you (mostly me though…maybe you too). 

Brokenness

“She is broken and won’t ask for help”

Brokenness is something we can all relate to because well...we are all broken. Jenna, the main character, sings about her unwillingness to seek help within the shattered confines of her marriage. I’ve always had trouble understanding why some people stay in abusive relationships until I looked at my own self-pity. I can be extremely hard on myself especially when I fall into the common misbehaviors of my damaged character. I repeat mistakes, often wondering if I’ll ever learn from them. My brokenness is rooted in fear and am willing to bet that much of your brokenness is rooted in the same; fear of facing your past, fear of change, fear of responsibility, fear of your own thoughts, fear of pain, fear of being alone, fear of losing someone, fear of losing yourself, fear of being loved and not being loved.

Jenna is afraid for the entirety of the story. She is afraid of never being loved and never loving in return; true love, not feared love as coerced by her egotistical husband. That fear began when she lost her mother, a woman who showed her that baking can be as artistically enriching to taste as the Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica is to absorb with your sight. Tragedy is difficult to recover from once it sinks its roots into the heart with unpronounced emotional numbness. Once you are numb, it’s easy to stay in an abusive relationship. One is convinced that it is better not to feel anything than to face the internal combustion that is the grieving process.

Jenna sings, "Most days I don't recognize me." She is holding on to her brokenness by dwelling on a past identity. We are not always the best version of ourselves in our most fondest memories and sometimes those admirable traits we have will alter. While our core identity remains in tact, the surrounding elements will shift. By trying to get back to a single time in our past we don't leave room for the necessary transformation of our heart’s authentic self. But as Jenna discovers at the end of the play "Everything Changes”, including those traits that made up the identity she once desired. 

Life is Alive

“Sometimes life just slips in through a back door and carves out a person and makes you believe it’s all true.”

Wow, how brutally honest is this lyric? When looking back on my life I can say there have been times when life carved out an identity that was false and convinced me it's who I was. Without self confidence, I believed that the repeated opinions of others was all I was made to be. This lyric is all about taking control of life before it takes control of you. Life of course is alive. It’s a garden waiting to be pruned or else prepared to grow wild wherever it likes.

When I was 10 years old my friend’s Michael and Matt had a picnic table in their backyard. One day they were playing on it (or something) and it broke. Rather than fess up, they blamed it on me. I wasn’t even there! That did not stop their mom from forcing a false confession out of me. She sat me down in her kitchen and told me that I needed to admit what I did or I would never be able to play with my friends again. She promised their wouldn’t be any repercussions If I just admitted it. It would have been nice if Mike and Matt had given me a heads up about this, but they didn’t. So instead of embracing an identity of honesty and self-worth, I admitted to a crime I never committed just so I would not lose my friends. She convinced me of admitting to something that was not true and it rooted into my identity. I started having a fear of authority from that point on. This is an example of how “sometimes life just slips in through a back door and carves out a person and makes you believe it’s all true.”

Even at a young age, even when we may think it doesn’t matter, even at the loss of friend’s, one cannot forfeit their identity. The outcome is immense as one develops their character.  

The Back to the Future Syndrome

“If I’m honest I know I would give it all back for a chance to start over and rewrite an ending or two.” 

I find myself thinking of times in my past that I would like to go back to and relive with the knowledge I have now. I want to prevent myself from making irrational choices in desperation of avoiding the pain of emotional consequences. I know; however, that because of former bad decisions I have achieved a much more valued character. I also know that because I persevered through those challenges I have become a better version of myself. I am a better person because of those mistakes. Yet, I still won't hesitate to travel back in time like Marty McFly and change my past even if it means affecting my future. That's what I call BFS or Back to the Future Syndrome. The goodness in our lives is shadowed by the dark scars in our past.

This song is Jenna's BFS moment. She cannot see the goodness residing inside her because she is consumed by thoughts of a "girl she once knew”. This is a plea for identity, an S.O.S. to the inner life, brought about by the unrecognized life force within her. We all have a life force that we have abandoned and are searching for again.

Jenna's life force is her unborn child motivating her to become stronger. Your life force may be an untapped talent, your passion for justice, or the yearning for unconditional love. Life forces are transformation makers. Jenna accepts that her old self is gone and a new identity outshines the old. Her transition from a motherless child to the mother of a child changes everything. Mother is who she is and how she now thrives as she sings to her newborn in the final song of the musical "And who I was has disappeared, it doesn't matter now you're here, so innocent...And I swear I'll remember to say we were both born today." She Used to be Mine is a song that wants Jenna to cling to the past, but the following song, Everything Changes prepares her for the new future, one that transcends her past self. Think of a snake, it cannot fit into its old skin once it's been shed. As Jesus put it, you cannot place new wine into old wine skins. You cannot cling to an identity you no longer have, but must seek for the transformative life force within. 

Bareilles bridges a gap between pop and musical that has been missing for a long time. The song speaks volumes in context of it’s story, but holds it’s own as a pop single. Enjoy!

Further Viewing

Jessie Mueller breaks your heart

Songs from Waitress Live Concert

I had the opportunity to take my daughter to watch Finding Dory for Father's Day. It was her very first movie at the theaters and my wife and I were a bit nervous of how she would behave through it, but she did surprisingly well. Since she loves Finding Nemo, she was captivated by the familiar characters and fell in love with a few of the new ones, namely Hank the "Ock-a-pus", which she kept repeating after the film (and everyday since…like ten times). 

I was caught up by this story with preexisting positive emotions. Finding Nemo was the first movie I took my little sister to see with my very first paycheck when she was 8 years old. Watching the sequel now with my daughter and having it be her first trip to the movies was heartwarming. Mix that with the opening scene of Dory losing her parents and it makes for some serious waterworks.  

While I don't want this to be a spoiler review, I do want to express the importance of the story’s three parts, it’s theme of child disability and the ingrained lesson of self-reliance. 

In this film Dory gets caught in the Marine Life Institute, an animal hospital/natural habitat exhibit. Through the Institute’s loudspeakers the audience hears the voice of actor and spokesperson Sigourney Weaver repeating the company’s mission statement: rescue, rehabilitation, and release. These stages not only emphasize the process for helping disabled animals, but serve as a euphemism for a child's process of becoming self-reliant despite the challenges or handicaps that may have been placed on them physically, mentally, and/or emotionally. It's a tremendous message that speaks to the heart of parent and child alike. 

Rescue

Rescuing is a prevalent theme in the story for our leading characters. In Finding Nemo we witness a child in need of physical rescue from exterior forces, and a parent's need for rescue from an internal force: the inability to let go.  Dory helps Marlin rescue his son Nemo, who was taken by a scuba diving dentist who claimed to have discovered Nemo struggling for his life out on the reef and "rescued" him. The dentist noticed Nemo's little fin, the disability he was born with, and believed he needed to be rescued when in fact Nemo was simply proving to his friends, his dad, and himself that his disability was not a hindrance to him by swimming a far distance to touch the diver's boat.

We see this same idea of rescue being played out again in the sequel. In Finding Dory,  young Dory is in need of not just physical rescue, but mental rescue. Dory was born with her own disability (short term memory loss). She never truly learned to manage it due to the involuntary separation from her parents. One year after Dory’s adventure with Marlin in Finding Nemo, she gets lost on a new journey to find her parents. Through her journey she discovers that she can rescue herself and manage her own disability. Even though she is at times fearful of being alone and possibly forgetting her mission, she still does not allow her disability to get the best of her as it did so many times in the past.

Parents want to rescue their children, not just from disabilities, but from everything. It feels natural to protect them. There were some tense moments in the movie when my daughter got scared and turned around to cling to my neck. Her tight grip made we feel like a rescuer. As the movie illustrates though, children will one day need to learn how to rescue themselves, which Dory demonstrates when she learns the skill of self-analysis to help aid her memory. She does not need to be mentally rescued anymore, but becomes self-reliant enough to be the rescuer, as she has proven to Marlin during the first movie and proves now to herself in the sequel. 

Rehabilitation 

Rehabilitation means to restore to health or former life after imprisonment or illness. The preparation of this process often takes place outside the normal living quarters. Nemo's rehabilitation came after spending time in the "eternal bonds of tank hood" with the dentist's aquarium fish. Marlin rehabilitated after his long adventure across the ocean looking for his son. In Finding Dory, the blue tang fish had to go back home to rehabilitate. She was a nomad without a home for a long time and could never learn to become self-reliant without the support of her family and friends. 

Children need the love of their family to encourage them and empower them. Without this, a child lacks an important tool in developing independence. Dory could never find someone to care enough about her to help her rehabilitate, until she met Marlin and Nemo. The familial bond created among the group sparked a deep memory of her actual family. Inspired by this powerful memory, Dory begins her rehabilitation process. 

Release

As I was holding my daughter in the theater, It struck me that one day I would have to release her into the world and she will have to learn how to make healthy choices regardless of anything holding her back. 

What a most difficult job this is for a parent! We tend to be just like Marlin who yearns to protect his son from the "big bad ocean" and who worries about Dory's disability getting in her way. Knowing that you cannot always be there to protect them, even those who struggle with a disability, is the rehabilitation process of all parents.  Parents know that establishing good healthy habits is key to self-sufficiency. Finding Dory showcases this brilliantly by allowing the audience to witness Dory's parents create consistent habits from early childhood. They sing songs to her (Just Keep Swimming), they place shells across the ocean that lead to their home and remind her to follow the shells if she ever gets lost, and most importantly they repeat this process. By repeating these healthy habits they bypass her short term memory and sink in to her pre-frontal cortex (or whatever part of the brain that can hold habits for a fish) which ultimately brings her back to her family in the end. 

Habits are powerful in children.  I witnessed a habit loop play out in front of my eyes with my two year old daughter last weekend. My wife and I have done our best to stick to a routine when it comes to putting her to bed. She eats dinner, she takes a bath, she brushes her teeth, she says her prayers, she reads a book, and then she walks to her bed to fall asleep. It may not be 100% perfect every time and we may alter the sequence slightly, but last weekend I saw how my daughter’s brain works when it comes to habits.

As I was feeding her in her chair my wife was reading the news update regarding the tragedy in Orlando. We suddenly stopped to pray, offering a moment of silence for the victims and their families. We said a “Hail Mary”, which is the prayer we usually say right before we put her to bed. She participated as she usually does and closed the prayer with her ominous “AMEN” swinging her hands over her head and chest to make the form of a squiggly cross. My wife suggested to add an “Our Father” as well, but Imma’s brain immediately began to go through her habitual routine. She stopped eating and insisted on reading a book. With her “Kite” book close at hand, she grabbed it flipped through the pages and immediately said the word “bed” pointing to her room. She was ready and willing to go to bed at that exact moment. It was because of our consistent practice of routine (steps of sleeping) and reward (sleep) that propelled her forward even when it wasn’t time to go to bed. 

Conclusion

Finding Dory is a beautiful extension to a film layered with emotionally charged parental suffering and decision making. It's a permanent reminder that a disability is only as crippling as one makes it out to be. With the proper support network and intrinsic motivation, self reliance can be attainable for those whom others deem it impossible. 

P.S. I haven't even discussed the slap in the face the movie makes to Sea World. Rescue, Rehabilitate, and Release. Think about that in terms of Sea World. 

Further Reading

How to break habits or create new habits.

Finding Dory and Sea World 

Black Fish’s Impact 

There once was a magical, but devastating dragon who destroyed an entire kingdom. It swooped in from the sky one sunny morning and breathed its fiery breath upon stone, steel, flesh, and bone. The dragon annihilated all of it's visible enemies and rested on the plunder that it took from the kingdom's golden vault.

Beneath the ruins of this visible kingdom resided yet another kingdom, a kingdom of lowly Ants, suffering from the unbearable heat brought on by the fire above. With their home in danger, the Queen Ant surfaced out of her colony into the ruins to come face-to-face and speak to the dragon. Her tiny body was barely seen by the monster as she stood on the tip of it's nose. She told the dragon of the carnage he was ensuing on a species who had nothing he wanted and plead for him to cease his torment.

The dragon did not listen. He sneered and told her that an Ant was too small a creature to concern itself with the affairs of war. Out of spite, he pierced the soil with one of his thick claws and blew an enormous fireball into the ground destroying her kingdom before her eyes. With the Queen Ant holding onto the thick scale of the dragon's nose, both eyes menacingly turned to her tiny body as he said, "I think you should tend to your dead your Majesty."

The queen scurried off the dragon's nose and returned to her kingdom only to find it now resembling the ruins of the human kingdom above. Looking upon the incinerated bodies of her children and people, she gathered the 12 tribes of the underground Ant Kingdom which stretched forth 2,000 miles in all directions. There she pitched her plan to remove the dragon.

Several weeks passed by and the dragon rested in a deep sleep. It did not notice the army approach because it came from beneath. Five million ants from each tribe positioned themselves under the dragon and lifted with the indelible strength only a creature like themselves possessed. They marched 300 miles south with the dragon upon their backs until they reached a steep bank with a cavernous ocean below.

As the dragon continued sleeping the ants waited for the sun to retire and the moon to show its full face. The ants knew that magical dragons hid from direct moonlight. When the moon was at it's brightest the ants carried the dragon off the bank in solidarity. The dragon fell hitting rock and stone on the way down. It awoke mid-fall, but upon making contact with the moon it became paralyzed and could not flap it's wings.

It crashed into the water and was pinned under the current. The dragon struggled to escape the moon's rays, but it did not let up as it shone thicker through the water. There it drowned within the confines of its watery prison. One by one, the ants that had fallen over with him began to emerge from the water and make their way back up the steep bank to praise their queen for destroying the dragon.

The Queen Ant gathered her community that night and told them that all praise goes to the moon for its natural defense against the enemies of the earth.

Whiplash Film Review - Be More Human

We've heard the expression "No Pain, No Gain" and it normally applies to muscle building when hitting the gym. The film Whiplash transitions this expression into the world of music, particularly drumming, while slowly revealing the innermost desires of the human heart to become the best version of itself. 

The film centers on Andrew (Miles Teller), a 19 year old drummer in Schaffer Music Conservatory, who finds himself hand-picked to play for the school's top jazz band and for their toughest music teacher, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). Andrew's determination to become "one of the greats" is no match for Fletcher's aggressive motivation techniques. From throwing chairs, to rage-like rants, and public humiliation Fletcher deems emotional torture a necessary step in a musician’s blossoming of greatness.

While the film expresses this boundary pushing in a dangerously exaggerated way, it holds some merit and credibility. Fletcher's techniques work until the question of humility is raised. Andrew quickly begins to practice harder each night surpassing the threshold of pain while playing through bloody blistered hands. The better he gets the cockier he becomes and Fletcher takes notice. Andrew is given many opportunities to remain humble throughout his trainings, but as he gets better he lets pride impulsively make his decisions. It's no longer about training to become the best, but feeling he has worked hard enough already to deserve to play with the best. To test Andrew, Fletcher replaces him with another drummer a few weeks before a major performance and it sets Andrew off in a rage. This pride combined with the emotional scars created by Fletcher establishes a monster within himself that Andrew does not recognize. He begins playing his music with hate, frustration, and pride rather than joy, love, and humility. The day of the Jazz competition Andrew is hit by an oncoming car while speeding to get to the concert hall in fear that another drummer will be playing his set. Despite the physical “whiplash” from the car wreck, a bloody Andrew arrives at the competition to satisfy his own ego rather than to see his company succeed.

Why the push?

Reebok just released a campaign called "Be More Human". A synonym for this campaign could be called" Become the Best Version of Yourself" The campaign shows athletes, firefighters, parents, and factory workers all training their bodies to keep up with the many demands of life. Why would anyone cause physical pain to their body through intense exercise? Reebok’s answer is to become a better and more determined human. This is why I feel that Fletcher's technique of pushing his students to their breaking point molds a stronger performer, but it is also a lesson for every area of one's life. While Fletcher’s way of motivating is far-fetched, I do believe in healthy practices of pushing the limit in order to become better at anything you do. We don’t see enough of this kind of pushing anymore.

We have become a society of settlers. We tend to settle for lives of mediocrity rather than push ourselves to achieve the things we know we can. Whether it is as difficult as becoming the greatest musician in the world or as simple as becoming the best possible friend to others, we lose sight of the bigger picture when faced with the hard work it takes to become the best version of ourselves.

This is where the film shines because at one point Andrew has the opportunity to become one of those settlers in life. He gives up on drumming after a major melt down and fall out with Fletcher and his school. He abandons his passion for music for the wrong reasons. Rather than investigate his obsessive compulsion to drumming he simply walks away from it. Yet at the end of the film we are given the magnificent visual of a person "fully alive", living out the best version of himself.  Without giving the finale away, we discover that when Andrew plays to prove to himself that he is a great drummer rather than to impress his teacher, the best version of himself shines. All of his hard work pays off and he musically blossoms in front of his father, his peers, and his teacher.

We live in a time of what Henry David Thoreau called "Quiet Desperation", this complacent settling of the cards life deals us. We get discouraged when our hard work does not pay off immediately and become too caught up in our own little world that we forget about the other people around us. This discouragement causes us to settle and take the first job that comes along, but never do the things that make us truly happy. We lead lives of this desperation and do not know how to escape from it. Whiplash shows us (in an overly exaggerated way) that every day we must stretch the talents we want to continue to develop, keep track of the dreams we want to achieve, and ask ourselves “what are we doing to accomplish them?”

I don't agree with Fletcher's aggressive techniques, but I do agree with the psychology behind them. He tells Andrew that “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job’.” If more people analyzed this statement while asking themselves why they haven't accomplished the dreams they set for themselves, their lives would become less desperate and more passionate.  

I am voting Whiplash as Best Picture and J.K. Simmons as Best Supporting Actor for the Oscars 2015.

Check out the Reebok - Be More Human Campaign Video

Also, Check out this great Whiplash review from a well-seasoned film reviewer, Mark Kermode.

The Imitation Game: Does Homosexuality Take Away Your Talents, Contributions, and Identity?

The Imitation Game is a film about secrets. Secrets which determine life, death, morality, and identity. From one perspective it is a spy film, from another it's a war epic, and from another it's activism for "gay" rights. There is also a hidden spiritual dimension of the film that slowly unravels. It is this generations “A Beautiful Mind” and is one of the most important films you will see this year.

STORY
Alan Turing is a puzzle solving mathematician who enlists in the British military to help the government crack the unbreakable Nazi code, Enigma, on which all of the German intelligence transmits their secret messages and planned attacks during the Second World War. With a team of four other cryptologists, Turing builds the world’s first computer that deciphers the Nazi’s secret decryption.

The film is brilliantly written, edited, and pieced together like its own unique crossword puzzle, shelling out clues frame by frame. The film's non-linear storyline provides an extra shroud of mystery as we jump back and forth from 1951 when Alan Turing is arrested. We are told one thing via Turing's opening voiceover, "Pay Attention". We then begin a flashback about Turing's interest in building a machine to break the Nazi code at the start of the war, and then a third storyline of Turing's childhood days with his best friend Christopher. Each story unfolds beautifully revealing deeper truths to a film layered in meaning.

IMITATION & IDENTITY

While Turing successfully deciphers Enigma, he struggles to solve the puzzle of his own life and identity. We discover that from a young age he has stood out as an odd ball in the social circle of his preparatory school colleagues. They criticize him, nail him under the floorboards of a classroom, and treat him as an outcast. All his schoolmates, with the exception of Christopher, his best friend and mentor, see nothing of value in him. It is Christopher who reminds Alan that "It's the people who no one imagines anything of that do the things no one can imagine." From a social perspective, Turing's colleagues would have preferred him to imitate someone he was not in order to fit the mold of "normalcy". 

The title "Imitation Game" is befitting for every scenario in the film. From the actual machine Turing builds that imitates the Nazi code (which he names Christopher) to Turing's “imitation” of a straight man during his marriage proposal; the “Imitation Game” is played by almost everyone in the film. Everyone has something to hide or information another person wants. Even the film itself plays an imitation game with it's audience. It imitates the kind of war film viewers expected to watch all the while revealing its hidden identity as the film progresses. One must in fact "pay attention" in order to piece these clues together to decipher its message.

While on the surface you are watching a war story of the intelligent minds behind the destruction of the Nazi regime, you are also discovering an ironic prejudice behind the British government. As the Germans were persecuting the Jews for not fitting into a specific identity, England was forcing homosexuals to hide their identity under penalty of law.

We are given a clue early in the movie about how to decipher the film's message. It is given upon the discovery of a transcribed code from a Russian spy amongst the group of cryptologists. The spy used the Gospel passage of Matthew 7:7 as the key to decrypt the hidden messages and I believe that it is also the key to the film. "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." It is a passage about discovering one’s identity and purpose in life which Alan Turing sought throughout the film.

After he successfully breaks Enigma and discovers the Nazi's plans of attack, Turing is forced to keep it a secret within a tight circle of individuals. In fear of the Germans discovering their code breaking, the content of each deciphered message is first analyzed meticulously to figure out which German attacks to allow through and which to stop.With the power of life and death in his hands it is Turing's decisions that ultimately bring the war to an end, shortening it by at least two years. Winston Churchill would later say that Turing “made the single biggest contribution to the allied victory in World War II”.

Despite his natural born genius, his gifted analytical thinking, and beautiful mind, Turing still struggled to find his identity within the film. He was unable to reveal that he was the man who ended the war and had to go back to his life of secrecy. He was a gay man in a time of major prohibition of "same-sex attraction". The only person he could ever be himself with was Christopher, who suspiciously died of bovine tuberculosis when they were in school together.

As the film jumps back to 1951, Turing is arrested for indecent exposure with another man. When he is being questioned, he asks the detective to play the "imitation game" with him. After telling the detective his entire life story he asks him to judge whether he is a machine, a person, a war hero or a criminal?

This is a critical part of the film's message. When the detective says that he cannot judge him, Turing sadly states, "Well then, you're no help to me at all." Turing was looking for someone else to help decipher his own identity. He was looking for a judge. Everyone else had failed him, his parents, classmates, people, and his country. He finally looks to the law to find some sort of fair judgment on his life and receives none. There is only one fair judge, qualified to reveal the purpose, identity, and mission behind any of us. This is where the film's spiritual message seeps through. 

God usually gets a bad wrap when it comes to homosexuality mainly because of human confusion and misunderstanding. God is love and creates everyone unique and unrepeatable. It wouldn't make sense for Christ to suffer on the cross for all except for those who are "gay". We need a serious reality check here. In Turing's case, those who were judging him were the same people he was willing to fight and risk his life for. He had never seen his talent and passion for justice as God-Given, at least not in the film, but those very qualities are gifts imbued in his identity. 

Does homosexuality take away your talents, contributions, and identity? Turing needed to be recognized as a person, not as a machine or a war symbol. He needed the righteous judgment of his Creator. Turing never looked to God, but looked to his own creation. The only person he could relate to was Christopher, his code breaking mentor. Without Christopher around to affirm his identity he then built a second Christopher, a code breaking machine that he could dedicate his life to. How could we possibly come to the conclusion that just because someone is gay that makes them less of a person to identify with? 

Turing was on a journey of self discovery, but had poor guidance. Rather than shun each other we must support one another along our individual journeys to understanding our own purpose and missions in life. We all must ask, seek, and knock in order to have our identities confirmed and recognized within the recesses of our soul.

WHERE DO YOU BELONG IN THE WORLD?
Much like Turing, we all hide a part of ourselves because of some fear, whether it is imprisonment, rejection, or persecution, we all play a part. We know how to act in front of parents, friends, family, managers, colleagues, or strangers. We find it difficult to be who we were born to be on display for others to see. 

We all yearn to know where we belong and how we fit in. This is especially true still to this day within the LGBT community as it was for over 49,000 men in Great Britain who were imprisoned for homosexual activity under the gross indecency law up until 2003.

Turing reminds me of Jesus in this film for so many reasons, one being that he was rejected for his innate identity. Yet Christ was a person who was always himself around everyone. He even went to his hometown and tried to perform miracles there even when they disbelieved. He was a man who lived his identity in every area of his life up to the point of death. He knew where he belonged.

Turing is definitely a Christ figure in the film for he knew he had a talent that was to be used outside of himself and despite the many years of humiliation, pain, and suffering from others he persevered to succeed in his mission. He tells the detective in a voiceover as we watch a young Turing being nailed into the floorboards by his schoolmates, "People like violence because it feels good, but take away the satisfaction and the act becomes hollow." That is the perfect description of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Rather than face imprisonment for indecent exposure, Turing chose chemical castration, a daily dosage of medicine aimed at curing his "gay" tendencies. This innocent victim took upon himself a chemical crucifixion that has not until recently begun bringing about fruits for the thousands of victims persecuted by the British government during this time. Whether this chemical obstruction was directly linked to his suicide or not, Turing was a victim of societal prejudice. And like Jesus, Turing was a man no one imagined anything of, but accomplished the thing no one could imagine.

Turing was pardoned in 2013 and you can check out the petition to support the pardoning of the 49,000 men convicted of being gay under British law. 

    

WHY I ALWAYS CRY AT THE END OF THE FILM "WARRIOR"

**Spoiler Alert

When was the last time you blubbered after a film? Maybe it was at the end of Titanic when you saw a young Jack take Rose's hand. Maybe it was at the end of Forrest Gump when he mutters through his tears about his son, "He's so smart Jenny." Or maybe it was the beautiful final scene of The Notebook which symbolizes the eternity of true love. We all have a blubbering film, for my wife it is Moulin Rouge, a film that she would start again from the beginning the moment it ended in a vicious cycle of tears. My uncontrollable tearjerker is the film Warrior. It is easily one of the most underrated movie ever made as it is the Rocky of MMA (mixed martial arts). The film is not so much about mixed martial arts as much as it's about the triumph of the human spirit. 

I've seen it four times now and each time I have embarrassingly cried at the closing credits. I'm talking shakes, lip quivers, and short breath panting. I needed to explore why this movie made me feel this way and I'm sure much of it has to do with my brother and my own masculine genetics.

The Plot
Warrior is a story of two estranged brothers, Brendan (Joel Edgerton) and Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy), who end up fighting each other in the championship bout of an MMA tournament. Trained at a young age to be vigilant fighters by their alcoholic father Paddy (Nick Nolte), both Brendan and Tommy reunite to settle the ambiguous hatred for one another that was built from their parents separation. While Tommy followed his mother and watched her lose a slow battle with cancer, Brendan stayed with his father and eventually parted ways due to Paddy's abuse of alcohol. 

Brendan became the family man, was married, had children, and took a job teaching high school physics. Tommy joined the Marines and abandoned his company after a traumatic event overseas. The story takes place after Tommy returns and seeks out his now sober father to help train him for an MMA tournament granting a five million dollar prize to its sole champion. Meanwhile, Brendan's family faces the foreclosure of their home and in a desperate attempt to make ends meet he participates in illegal street fights for extra cash. By a stroke of luck Brendan finds a way into the same MMA tournament as his brother without knowing it.

Each character has something to prove, something to gain, and something to lose. If Brendan does not win he will lose his house and if Tommy does not win he cannot support the family of his fallen comrade (whose death he takes responsibility for).

Okay, so why all the crying?

My Brother

My brother and I grew up very close. I remember how he would cry on the front steps of our New Jersey home when I refused to take him with me to go hang out with my friends. He so badly wanted to be a part of my life at such a young age (there is a four year difference between us). I remember one time our older friend, Derek, was criticizing my brother Chris over some dispute about roller blades. To alleviate the pressure off of my brother, I picked up Derek's roller blades that were sitting on my front porch and I threw them off to the grass below. The thud of the blades lit a flame of anger in Derek's eyes as he turned his attention to me now. He simply said, "Why don't we go across the street, if you are man enough." This was clearly going to be a fight and I was definitely not going to win as Derek was twice my size and much older. Yet, I was not going to allow Derek's criticism of my brother be taken lightly.

Rather than appear like a wimp in front of our two other friends who were present for this as well, I obliged to meet him across the street in the parking lot of a Jehovah's Witness church. It was freezing that day and there was snow all around me. The moment we reached the emptied lot, Derek threw me to the ground and pinned me there. He picked up my head and began smashing it against the cold asphalt. He kept seeking an apology, but none was offered. I just stayed there quietly and took an ass whooping for my brother. Derek did not feel good fighting someone who wouldn't return his frustrated blows and he let me go, riding away on his bicycle. (Ironic side note, Derek is now an MMA trainer!) 

That was a great day of bonding for my brother and me. I stood up for him and he was proud of that. He was much smaller than I was and I was obligated as his brother to protect him. He wouldn't stay little forever though.

Sometime later, Chris and I were standing in line buying Mystic drinks at our neighborhood Exxon convenient store, when the guy in front of us turned around and asked if we were brothers. I told him we were and he told me to remember that one day my brother was going to be bigger than me and I would have to learn how to deal with that. He said that his brother now towers over him as an adult. I never forgot that because eventually Chris grew to become bigger and physically stronger.

Through the years we slowly drifted apart, taking separate paths and finding different interests. The most devastating divergence between us was when I asked him to step down as my best man at my wedding because I felt he was not stepping up when I needed him most. We never talked about this further and it still feels like a wound in our relationship even though it has been almost six years since. I grew up like Brendan Conlon, a family man working hard to support the ones he loves. My brother is a less angry version of Tommy Conlon, focused on physique, nutrition, and holding a dark cloud of emotional repression.

Masculine Sentimentality

Men have an inner need to express themselves physically. This is why violent sports are entertaining. This does not mean that women are excluded from this, but it tends to be the majority of men who have trouble communicating their feelings through thoughts and words. Men communicate physically through the pummeling of their bodies. Maybe it is rooted from the early days of Gladiators, but men tend to settle the score through physical means.

There is a dichotomy when it comes to the way men and women share their feelings and connect with others emotionally. Without completely generalizing, women tend to express their feelings more openly then men do. Saint John Paul II said that women are more sentimental and men tend to be more sensual. It is through that sensuality that mend discover their sentimentality. However, I also believe that men are called to sacrifice their bodies as a virtuous act. This driving force to lay down one's life can be misconstrued and taken out of context when it comes to violent sports, but it can also be used to understand the way men communicate. Think of William Wallace in Braveheart or Leonidas in 300. A hardworking husband may show his love through the intense hours he puts in, trying to balance work, family, and self-development. Physical activity is a way men work out the emotional stirrings that settle in their hearts. Is it perfect? No, but it's our challenge as men to be aware of our masculine sentimentality and its deeper desire to express externally that which is hidden internally.

This is vividly expressed in Warrior when Tommy faces Brendan in the final showdown. Despite the many attempts to reconcile, Tommy refuses to listen to Brendan and see reason. At the same time Brendan refuses to see his brother’s emotional pain caused by witnessing the deaths of his mother and Marine brothers. So they must settle their emotional battle in a very physical way. Without spoiling the ending, it is the last two minutes of this fight that always bring about uncontrollable tears. 

Those last two minutes send a shockwave of emotion through my body. I begin to shake because I am reminded of every missed opportunity I had to be a responsible big brother. I am reminded of all the times I failed to shield my brother from witnessing the domestic disputes in our household. I cry because I stopped fighting the Derek's of the world for him and lost myself in a web of familial numbness. I cry because when our parents split up I didn't choose him just as  Brendan didn't choose Tommy. And no matter how beneficial it was for my well-being and maturity, I'll always fee guilty for not being there when he needed me most. 

Those final two minutes showcase the need for the human body to physically break in order for one's emotional wall to be torn down. I secretly want to fight my brother in order to crack open the the sealed container we buried our childhood innocence in, allowing it to spillover in the grace of forgiveness. I cry because I find more courage in writing these emotions than actually speaking them. 

Is this a movie worth watching then? Definitely, especially with your brother.

I love you Chris!