My 9/11 memories

I debated for a long time whether to write a "What were you doing on 9/11?" piece. All Americans were affected in some way or another that day, to be sure. But reading the accounts of those personally impacted in the Time magazines that have arrived at my doorstep over the past couple of weeks kind of killed my desire to add what I felt to the conversation.

I wasn't directly affected by the attacks. I have some relatives who are/were police officers and firefighters, and I'm extremely proud of them, but they are a part of a community I don't feel attached to on a personal level in any way. The fact that those men and women who charged into the towers that morning were officers of the law or sworn protectors of the citizenry wasn't what mattered, it was their courage to do what was right and necessary.

But perhaps "directly affected" is a misnomer. What American didn't have a strong visceral reaction to seeing the images of the towers engulfed in flames for the first time on that morning ten years ago? Who among us can honestly say our lives weren't changed by the attacks? I'll admit I didn't have a ton of perspective when watching the television coverage in Ms. Sailor's eighth grade Gifted Language Arts class that morning. I didn't know what al-Qaida was. I wasn't even sure of the tenants of the Muslim faith. I was going on 14. My most vivid memory of the day was looking up at the sky, constantly. In Mr. Washburn's fifth period social studies class, we were glued to the TV, as we had been in all my classes that day. As he tried to put what was happening in context, I remember staring out the window at William Jewell on the hill about two miles away. The sky was so damn blue that day, it looked like it could envelop that red facade. And part of me wanted it to, to somehow reveal that this had all been a terrible dream, that I was still asleep in that same bed I went to sleep in the night before.

After school activities were canceled. All the neighborhood kids were home together for the first time since we were in elementary school. We got together and played baseball in a backyard-the first time we'd done that in at least three years, and the only time we've played since. I don't know if we were all wrapped up in the same desire for nostalgic certainty, or we didn't want to be alone. Either way, we tried to keep the chatter on things other than what was going on, but that was an exercise in idyllic futility.

In the evening, my whole family piled into my dad's Honda and went to church. It was the only time I can remember being there on a Tuesday night, except for holidays. I don't remember much about the service. It seemed like another one of those experiences where people were trying to grasp for something concrete on a day that made no sense. I remember when we left, either my brother or I asked my dad what was going to happen now, was everything going to be different? Nobody knew.

I crawled back into bed that night in a state of new normal. I always fell asleep and woke up either watching MTV or ESPN back in those days. MTV got in the habit of showing the same videos on a loop (I saw that Nelly/country "It's All in My Head" video at least fifteen times in one week) in between news coverage and shots from the Times Square Studio where they'd shot thousands of episodes of TRL I'd seen over the past two years. Carson Daly, as sad as it sounds, was my way into New York for a couple of weeks, until Jon Stewart came back on The Daily Show. Gradually, the new normal became the comfortable normal. But it took awhile, and I know for some it never will be a comfortable normal. Viewing the site of the towers in the summer of 2007, and seeing the destruction that was still being cleaned up, "comfortable normal" seems like a wrong phrase. But humans need to rationalize, and we need to filter experiences in order to progress in life. I hope that process has brought comfort to some over the past ten years.

To those still suffering, may you find strength. To those of you seeking meaning, know that it likely won't come in this life. To everyone reflecting on your experiences and emotions today, you are not alone.

A Sticky Floors and Salty Popcorn Review-Grave Encounters

It's about that time again. Time to break out the candy corn, toilet paper rolls and adult diapers for another thrilling season of Halloween cinematic fare. To that end comes "Grave Encounters," a film that piggy-backs on a lot of what we've seen before in the genre while also providing a nice amount of meta-commentary on the cynicism for the paranormal that shows like Ghost Adventures (ripped off pretty heavily here) engender in the general public.

If you have vertigo, you might want to sit this one out.

This year's vogue "found footage" flick comes to us courtesy of the Vicious Brothers, making their directorial debut in a rather safe formula. "The Blair Witch Project," "Cloverfield" and the "Paranormal Activity" films have all made millions of dollars in profit at the box office, and who can blame some indie film-makers from thinking they can facilitate horrific lightning striking twice again?

The problem with "Grave Encounters" is that it does none of the things those other films do to make us feel a part of the action. The movie does an excellent job of establishing characters we may actually have sympathy for early on, but relegates them to blubbering buffoons quickly in the second act (if you don't laugh at the fate of Houston Gray, purported paranormal psychic extraordinaire, you weren't watching close enough). The only character who feels like he may have some real weight is the film's main protagonist, Lance Preston (Sean Rogerson), whose Zak Baggans vomit-inducing routine actually shifts into real, disturbing horror as the film progresses.

Another mistake "Grave Encounters" makes is to allow gaps in the narrative to pry viewers from their visceral reaction to the events on-screen. Some creepy shit happens, to be sure, and that's important for these kinds of films, but with "Cloverfield" and "Paranormal Activity" there was always a sense that we were building to some kind of understanding-that the rational world would hold some kind of explanation or means of understanding what we were seeing in the end.

In a bold move, "Grave Encounters" throws realism completely out the window in the middle of the film. It's an interesting take on the genre, but what exactly happens is never fully explained. The significance of what we see on screen, then, is marred completely by the impossibility of contextualizing the images that flicker before our eyes. Okay, a dead woman rises out of a bathtub (real original, guys), some hands come out of a wall, and people disappear. Got it. Tell me what it means, please.

"Grave Encounters" shows flashes of self-referential brilliance in the opening moments that are marred by silly execution at times and overly deferential scares. That doesn't mean you shouldn't turn out the lights and give it a shot, though. Because when the film does scare you, it scares you in a big way. And its most disturbing scenes rank right up there with the classics of the genre. Just make sure you've got those Depends ready.

Verdict: 3/5 stars