Even Fortune Cookies Can Be Right Sometimes

     This was written for a Writer's Digest short-story contest on 12-21-14. I was curious about the backstory of a picture I saw on Facebook several weeks earlier, and this was what it ended up as once I tried to discover the background.

     The leaves were thick on this trail in the woods outside my sister’s house. It was an October weekend, and my sophomore year at Lake State wasn’t going any better than the one before it. I took Beth’s black Lab along for company; he was a good listener to my complaints. Wayne sniffed at a tree ahead of me, then thought about chasing a squirrel before trotting back happily to my side, tail wagging gleefully. He was Beth’s dog, but her boyfriend Johnny claimed Wayne was mine, as he always seemed happier on the weekends I’d come over. He asked if we were planning on going any farther, or turning back towards the house for pretzels. “I don’t know…we’ve got time to go a few more miles before leaving for the game.”

     We’d planned on going to see the Greyhounds play Sarnia. Last time I’d been to a Greyhounds game they lost to Sudbury, the Wolves scoring four goals to our two. I’d been at that game with David and Melanie…It was a long time since January. Wayne popped his nose up under my hand, saying as plain as he could, “It’s okay, Callie. You’ve got Beth and Johnny and me, and besides; there’s so much to explore!” He didn’t really understand, but then, can a dog ever really understand what we people say? Still, I don’t guess I really understood it either, if I was being honest. And that made me really mad. Which is part of the reason I was taking this hike; to get away from everyone and everything. And it was calming to be in the natural world of nature, the familiar world of the wild animals and trees.  I watched as a raccoon crawled along from his secret hiding place behind a pine where he’d just stashed his latest shiny loot. I snorted at my use of the word “shiny” in that sentence. The Firefly connotation wasn’t what I’d meant - the raccoon for real took a shiny metallic object – but he’d probably thought the watch or whatever-it-was was cool. I knew where that reference had came from…

     The wind was blowing in from Lake Superior; I zipped up my jacket a little higher. Melanie was the one who gave me this jacket, come to think of it….We’d grown up at Newberry High, were pretty much inseparable. It was our little group, our own little tribe. The three of us just clicked. David and I went on to Lake State, and Mel found a job as a hairstylist in town. That made things different. I’m not sure what was so foreign about the change; but I really didn’t handle it well. Maybe none of us did. Maybe nobody ever does. David seemed to handle things better than I did. He’d always gotten along with people the best of our clique; I was more at home with nature and Mel was the one with imagination. We both went Greek, and my grades settled into a steady parade of C’s, with the occasional B thrown in at random intervals. I really missed living with Beth and Johnny and Wayne; so I came out here as often as I had a few hours. There was a lot of stupid trash stupid unthinking careless people littered up the world with; even in my patch of trails. I dug out the trash sack I usually carried in a pocket reserved for pickup like this. Kind of weird, since Mom and Beth had/have such a hard time getting me to clean my space. But that’s indoors, it’s different.

     If you find out that he’s cheating on you with your best friend….well. What do you do? That “Greek community” thing didn’t work out too well – I had one sister, and that was enough, didn’t need any sentimental fake chicks doing that whole routine. I started drinking more often. That seemed to work. I ran into them at the Snowman Burning in March by mistake; it was disgusting the way they were fawning all over each other selfie-ing.

     Wayne was busy marking a tree. I’d rather not see that, but, hey, he’s a dog, and that’s what they do. And he’s helped so much over the last couple months, just…by being himself. I can overlook poor manners this once. Beth’s cat Scraps has been sweeter than usual to me, too. That proves I must be pretty low.

     Beth had named him after Gretzky; we’ve always been rink rats, our family’s always followed the Greyhounds, Mom remembered seeing him play in ’77 as a kid. As for NHL teams, I’m a follower of the Red Wings, Beth pulls for the Jets.

      We kept going along the trail; I was cleaning litter from the highway, Wayne was chasing squirrels. A hawk sailed overhead. Things were pretty silent; not many cars going down the road; most of the noises were natural. The wind whipping along. A chickadee whistled its tune. A purple finch stared at me, trying to figure out what I was doing in his world. It was peaceful. 

      There was old beer cans and the remains of Chinese takeout in some dead leaves over there; I started to clear it away. Several rice-containers coated in sweet-and-sour sauce later I figured I had it all picked up. Then I noticed a runaway fortune cookie skittering along the path. It was still in the wrapper, not even eaten. If you have Chinese food, how do you not eat the fortune cookies, too? I popped the left side of the plastic prison open and tossed the entire thing into my mouth. One good crunch, and then I felt the paper on my tongue. I fished it out and looked to see what the fortune said. Not that I believe in them or anything; they’re masterworks of vague generality. Like Zodiacs or whatever those are called.    

     “The love of your life will appear in front of you unexpectedly,” the slip of paper read. Yeah, right. Then I noticed a pair of joyous brown eyes and a cold, pointy black nose over a lapping, licking dog-tongue. I grinned, shaking my head. “Maybe they work, once in a while.” He barked he was ready to go home. “All right, boy. Let’s go.”

The Avengers

     With Netflix taking down The Avengers on Monday, I figured it was high time to get a review written. So, quick recap: After being introduced to the characters Tony Stark(Iron Man), Dr. Bruce Banner(Hulk), Natasha Romanoff(Black Widow), Thor, Clint Barton(Hawkeye) and Steve Rogers(Captain America), in that order, we come to the end of Phase One* in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There's a lot of important minor or recurring characters that we come to know as well at the same time we learn these superheroes' origin stories. We've also learned that there's a secretive agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., Bruce Banner is being hunted by the U.S. Army, and Thor's brother Loki is a master of manipulation, among many other important and/or interesting facts.
     So, to quickly recap the lead-in to this movie: During World War II, the Nazis' top-secret science division was known as HYDRA, run by a man named Johann Schmidt(aka the Red Skull). HYDRA found a cube of unimaginable energy and power known as the Tesseract, which came from Thor's homeworld of Asgard. A behemoth-sized bomber that was piloted by Rogers crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, taking the Tesseract down with it. Brilliant wealthy, eccentric and arrogant inventor Howard Stark finds the Tesseract and organizes a search for Rogers, who, due to genetic changes from a failed government project to create super-soldiers, doesn't actually die when the plane hits an iceberg. Instead he's frozen in suspended animation for almost seventy years, suddenly finding himself in modern-day Times Square. Meanwhile, the Tesseract has reappeared and is under S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, and Thor's friend Dr. Erik Selvig, who has been unwittingly hypnotized by Loki) takes on the task of studying the cube.

     Somewhere in space, someone known only as The Other is speaking to the occupant of a large throne. The Other explains that Loki(Tom Hiddleston) was given an army of Chitauri in exchange for retrieving the Tesseract. Thus, Loki controls the world of Midgard(or Earth, as we call it) and the one being spoken to will control the universe.
     At a combined S.H.I.E.L.D./NASA base in New Mexico, while the personnel on base are evacuating under orders from Agent Phil Coulson(Clark Gregg), the Tesseract is unstable; opening a portal that allows Loki to enter our world. He quickly hypnotizes Agent Clint Barton(Jeremy Renner), turning the Hawkeye into a zombie like Selvig. Director Nick Fury(Samuel L. Jackson) instructs his second-in-command Maria Hill(Cobie Smoulders) to retrieve the Phase 2 Prototypes and get them out safely. She asks if that's really a priority at the moment, considering everyone within an unknown distance may die. "Until such time as the world ends, we shall act as though it intends to spin on," he answers. Being the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., he'd know.  Loki, Selvig and Barton escape with the Tesseract, Hill giving chase, while Coulson and Fury jump aboard a helicopter just before the compound implodes. Hill is trapped in a rockslide on the compound's edge but is otherwise unharmed, while Loki blasts the helicopter out of the sky and the commandeered truck slips away. In response to this Level 7 threat, Fury has no choice but to activate the emergency-situation-only Avengers Initiative.
     So, Coulson starts that plan by calling Agent Natasha Romanoff(Scarlett Johansson), who at the moment is interrogating shady Russians military personnel. On hearing Barton had been compromised, she signs up for the mission quickly. She's sent to enlist Dr. Bruce Banner(Mark Ruffalo, but we'll get to that). Okay, so when you have a bunch of movies interconnected so tightly like these, sometimes cast changes are inevitable and you pretend the character hasn't changed a bit. But Edward Norton was a much better Banner than Mark Ruffalo. Anyway, she goes to South America(One of Banner's favorite hiding places) and traps him in a decently-well-off shack outside Calcutta. She explains that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been tracking him for some time, even running interference to keep the Army away. "Doctor, we've on the verge of facing a global catastrophe." "Oh. Those I actively try to avoid." Fury wants Banner to find the Tesseract, tracing it by the minute traces of gamma radiation it leaves.  And everyone knows that Dr. Banner is the world's foremost expert in gamma radiation(which, incidentally turns him into the Hulk at times. After the accident, Selvig and his fellow colleagues never heard from him again.)
     Fury is in a meeting with his bosses, the World Security Council. Actually, he's defending his stance that a response team is needed. They're skeptical at best. "You're going to leave the survival of the human race to a handful of freaks." "They can be isolated, unbalanced even - But I believe with the right push, they can be exactly what we need." "You believe," one member says. "War is not won by sentiment, Director," another proclaims. "No. It's won by soldiers." Fury agrees respectfully.
   
     At this point, we have a brilliant sequence of Steve Rogers(Chris Evans) trying to adapt to ordinary life. It was cut out because of time constraints, but in my opinion should have been left in. As seen here, Rogers watches newsreel footage from the war often, and considers trying to see if his love interest Peggy Carter is still alive. Howard Stark is dead, but his son Tony(Robert Downey Jr.) is an adviser to S.H.I.E.L.D., so, maybe... He wanders around by himself, stopping by a sidewalk cafe where he meets a pretty waitress named Beth. After she walks away, an old man(Stan Lee) at the next table says he should've asked for her number. Steve shakes his head; he's just not ready yet. It's hard, so hard, to die and then wake up seventy years later. Everyone you knew is either dead or extremely elderly... To try to cope with this frustration, Rogers finds an old-school boxing gym and annihilates a mountain of punching bags.

     This is where Fury finds him, fighting the flashbacks and trying to come to grips with this horrible new reality. "You here with a mission, sir?" "I am." "Tryin' to get me back into the world?" "Trying to save it." In another part of New York City, the newest high-tech building of Stark Industries is almost finished, and Tony and his in-all-senses-of-the-word partner Pepper Potts(Gwyeth Paltrow) are having one of their endless arguments when Coulson interrupts. "Mr. Stark, we need to talk." "You have reached the Life Model Decoy of Tony Stark. Please leave a message." "This is urgent." "Then leave it urgently." Coulson then walks into the room. "Security breach!" "Phil! How are you doing?" Pepper welcomes him in. "'Phil'? His first name is 'Agent'." Tony mutters. Coulson hands Tony a package to review and then leaves, Pepper tactfully moves on to the next piece of business. "You have homework. A lot of homework." Basically all of the events of the Phase One movies that he wasn't directly involved in. Tony begins tackling the pile of material.
     The next day, Coulson and Steve are flying in a Quinjet to an aircraft carrier. Steve is reading over Banner's file, and a starstruck Coulson attempts to explain what an honor it is to fly with his childhood hero. "I hope I'm the right man for the job," Steve says. "Oh, you are. Absolutely." Coulson then goes on to say that the suit has been slightly modified. "Aren't the Stars and Stripes a little....old-fashioned?" "Everything that's happened, everything that's going to come to light...people might just need a little old-fashioned." They, and everyone else, arrive at the aircraft carrier. The engines begin doing something strange, prompting Steve to ask if this was a submarine. Banner: "Really? They want me in a submerged pressurized metal container?" Just then the "ship"(in reality a Helicarrier, an aircraft carrier/ship/helicopter/airplane) begins to lift off the water. Banner continues groaning. "Oh, no. This is much worse." The frayed nerves of everyone involved are beginning to show.

     In Stuttgart, Germany, Loki creates a distraction for Hawkeye by causing a disturbance at a high-class societal event. (Hawkeye's mission is to obtain iridium for Selvig.) Cap suits up and heads to Germany. Loki is delivering a propogandic monologue about subjugation when an elderly Jewish man stands up and refuses to comply. "I said, 'Kneel before me.'" "Not to men like you. There are always men like you." At this point Captain America rescues the guy and walks towards the Asgardian. "You know, the last time I was in Germany, and saw somebody standing above everybody else like this, we ended up disagreeing." Black Widow and Iron Man come in as backup, and after a brief skirmish Loki allows himself to be captured. On the return trip to the Helicarrier, a huge storm comes up. Loki shivers. "Whatsamatter, scared of a little lightning?" Rogers asks the prisoner. "I'm not overly fond of what follows." Thor(Chris Hemsworth) lands and enters the plane, grabs Loki and flies off. Iron Man chases them, not understanding what's going on. Besides, his prisoner had just been kidnapped. "Stark, we need a plan of attack!" "I have a plan. Attack." "Cap, I'd sit this one out if I were you," Widow warns. "These guys are basically gods." "There's only one God, ma'am, and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like that." Loki and Thor have some....issues to work out. "The Earth is under my protection, Loki!" "And you're doing a marvelous job with that. The humans slaughter each other in droves while you idly fret. I mean to rule them!" "And so think yourself above them?" "Why, yes." Loki's surprised by the question. Isn't the answer obvious? "Then you miss the truth of ruling, brother. The throne would suit you ill," Thor's almost in tears now in anger and pity. "Listen well, brother -" Thor disappears, tackled by a flying Iron Man. "I'm listening," Loki replies. Thor and Iron Man begin brawling through the Black Forest while Loki observes, amused. "HEY!" Cap shouts. They both stop, surprised. "Look, I don't know what you're doing here-" "I'm here to stop Loki's schemes!" "Then prove it. Put the hammer down." "Uh, yeah, no....Bad call! He's really loves his hammer!" Stark doesn't agree with this at all, getting sideswiped by Mjolnir, Thor is only too happy to comply. But apparently vibranium is even stronger than Asgardian metal. Everyone warily gets to their feet
     Loki is trapped inside a glass cage meant for the Hulk, agitating Fury by pointing out an element of his motives that perhaps strikes a little too close to home. Fury manages a flippant reply before stalking away. Watching the exchange is everyone else, Thor tells them that there's an army of Chitauri coming to help him take the Earth, and Banner mentions that must be why he needed Selvig; to build a portal so that they can enter. "Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason; but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother." "He killed eighty people in two days," Romanoff drops in. "...And he's adopted." Banner wonders what the iridium is for. Stark then waltzes in and delivers a lecture about the stabilizing properties this element allows; the portal shouldn't collapse in on itself, and can therefore stay open as long as Loki wants. Barton could get his hands on the rest of the portal-building materials fairly easily, only thing left is a power source. "When did you become an expert on thermonuclear astrophysics?" Hill asks sarcastically. "Last night. The packet. Selvig's notes. The extraction theory papers? Am I the only one who did the reading?" Banner and Stark begin a rapid-fire unintelligible scientific plotting session, Cap and Fury tell them they ought to start their counterattack by studying Loki's sceptre. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon." "What I want to know is how it turned two of our smartest men into his personal flying monkeys." Thor looks mystified. "I understood that reference!" Steve says, thrilled.
     The new friends bond over science, and with some help from Cap, discover that the power source in question is Stark Tower, and then get diverted in what Fury's not telling them. "He's a spy. He's THE spy. Even his secrets have secrets." Steve, curious now, prowls around the ship. Tony continues pestering Banner about the Hulk. Thor and Coulson chat on the bridge, Thor trying to explain Loki's need for power and vengeance. Fury, speaking in riddles and half-truths as ever, asks them why, if he's a prisoner, it seems that Loki's the only one on the ship that wants to be there.
     Inside his cage, Loki greets Romanoff, who's snuck up on him looking for intel regarding Barton. The trickster talks her into revealing her debt to Hawkeye, who didn't kill her on a mission to do so. She joined S.H.I.E.L.D. to get away from her KGB past, now putting her "very specific skill set" to better uses. Loki then mocks her desires in another monologue. "You lie and kill, in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors, but they are part of you,  and they will never go away." (Perhaps he's also speaking to himself here....) As this speech is eloquently delivered, Stark and Banner's hack of the system is discovered, and Rogers finds weapons with HYDRA markings. (They were confiscated by the Allies at the war's end.) In the midst of Loki's mad emotional torturing, Romanoff discovers his plan: To release the Hulk and split the team up, thereby allowing the portal to be opened and the Chitauri unleashed.
     "What are you doing, Mr. Stark." Fury sweeps into the lab. "Uh...I've kind of been wondering the same thing about you. What is Phase 2, anyway?" Cap plunks one of the ray guns on a table. "Phase 2 is S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the cube to make weapons."  Fury tries to explain. "We gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean -" Tony spins his computer monitor around, blueprints clearly visible. "I'm sorry, Nick. What were you lying?" Romanoff stalks in. "Loki's been manipulating you, Banner." "And you've been doing what, exactly? I'd like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D. is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction." Fury points at Thor, who's as surprised as anyone. "Last year we had an encounter with visitors whose grudge match leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned." "My people want nothing but peace with your planet." "But you're not the only people out there, are you?" A sea of argumentation, everyone yelling over the top of everyone else, gets underway. "We're not a team, we're a chemical mixture that creates chaos." Banner says.
     Barton is leading an invasion during this argument, drawing closer and closer as the tempers rise ever higher. "Without the suit, what are you?" Rogers asks Stark. "Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. You're a lab rat, Rogers; everything special about you came from a bottle." "You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you." "I think I'd just cut the wire."
     At this point, the Helicarrier is breached; one engine goes down, and Stark and Rogers are sent to repair it. Banner transmogrifies into the Hulk, which chases Black Widow. On hearing the Hulk's roar, Loki smiles. Cap is sent to flip a switch that will let Stark get inside the turbine. "What's it look like in there?" "It appears to run on some form of electricity." "Well...you're not wrong." Tony then talks Steve through his end of the repair, and they (eventually) get the engine running again. The Widow/Hulk chase breaks apart more of the ship's insides until Thor crashes into the rage monster, saving Romanoff. Thor attempts to reason with Banner, but he and the Hulk end up destroying most of a hangar, sometime later the Hulk crashlands in a warehouse. Barton shuts down another engine, dropping the craft like a rock. Thor tries to tackle an escaping Loki, but winds up sailing through the hologram and landing in the cage, trapped. His brother stands outside the cage, unimpressed. "Are you ever not going to fall for that?" (Lucy and the football...) Coulson appears in the doorway, armed with a prototype gun so out-there and advanced that even he doesn't know what it does. Loki stabs Coulson's heart with the sceptre as Thor watches his friend expire. He then opens the bomb bay door, dropping Thor twenty thousand feet below. Before he dies, Coulson shoots Loki with the big unknown gun. Loki's blasted through a wall from the impact. "So that's what it does." Black Widow and Hawkeye have a fight scene in a hallway, she knocks him out. Stark narrowly avoids being shredded by the flawed engine's turbines, taking out a mercenary shooting at Steve. So that first engine is fixed now. Loki escapes on a plane.
     Fury runs to Coulson's side. "I'm clocking out, boss." "Not an option." "It's okay. If this was ever going to work, they needed...someone...to...." Fury stares at his most loyal agent for a minute, then tells Hill, Steve and Tony the news in person. He explains that yes, they were trying to build an arsenal out of the Tesseract, but he had an even riskier idea in mind: "There was an idea, Stark knows about this, but there was something called the Avengers Initiative, that would take a group of remarkable individuals and see if they could become something more, to see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died believing that idea, in heroes." Tony can't handle all this heavy stuff, walking away to think it over and understand it. "Well, it's an old-fashioned notion." Fury says to himself, loud enough for Steve and Hill to hear.
     Barton snaps out of it, fully himself again, though reeling from the trauma of "having your brain taken out...and something else being stuffed in." Natasha's watching him, waiting for to wake up. She says they have to stop Loki. "Who's 'we'?" Hawkeye asks. "I dunno. Whoever's left."
     "Was he married?" Steve asks Tony. "No. There was a cellist....I think." "I'm sorry." Steve pauses. "He seemed like a good man." "He was an idiot." "For believing?" "For taking on Loki alone." "Sometimes there isn't a way out, Tony." They discuss Loki's strategy, wondering why he wanted to divide their forces and then conquer them. "He wants to be seen doing it, he wants an audience..." "Like in Stuttgart." "Right. That was just previews, this is Opening Night. Loki, he's a full-tilt diva, he wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a..monument built to the skies with his name plastered-" Tony realizes that Loki WILL probably use Stark Tower as a power source like they were saying earlier. And, also, that he could be talking about himself here, too. Neither is a very good thought. Cap jumps on a Quinjet for New York with Hawkeye and Widow piloting. Iron Man and Thor each fly solo. It's time for the Avengers to assemble.

     Hill points out to Fury that Coulson's prized near-mint Captain America trading cards, now blood-stained, were in his locker when he died, not his jacket. "I know. They needed the push."
     Tony lands at Stark Tower and politely orders Selvig to shut the machine down. Delusional, he refuses, and so Tony tries blasting the machine. That doesn't work, either; but does knock Selvig out. So Tony sets his sights on Loki, they both walk inside. "Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity." "Uh, no. Actually I'm planning to threaten you." Loki chuckles. "You should have left your armor on for that." "Yeah...it's seen a bit of mileage. And you've got the Glowstick of Destiny." Tony pours himself a drink, offers Loki one. Loki declines and chuckles again over the stall attempt. "No, I'm threatening you." "The Chitauri are coming. What have I to fear?" "The Avengers. That's what we call ourselves. Sort of a team. 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes'-type thing." "Yes, I've met them." "Takes us a while to get any traction, that's for sure. But...let's do a headcount here. Your brother, the demigod; a super soldier; a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend; a man with breathtaking anger management issues; and a couple of master assassins. And you; you've managed to piss off every single one of them." "That was the plan." "Not a great plan." Tony's slipped some sort of metal bracelets on his wrists while talking. He remains completely calm during this whole exchange, it's part of what makes it so awesome. "I have an army," Loki says. "We have a Hulk." "Oh? I thought the beast had wandered off." "You're missing the point. There is no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe they're too much for us, but it's all on you. Cause if we can't protect the Earth we'll damn sure avenge it." Loki tries then to hypnotize Tony by tapping his chest with the sceptre, but there's just a clinking noise. He pauses, puzzled, then tries again. Another clink. "This usually works." (The sceptre is being stopped by Tony's artificial heart.) He throws Tony out the window instead, and we find out what the metal bracelets are for: They're locking devices for his newest suit, the Mark 7. This suit attaches itself to Stark, stopping his fall and carrying him back up to the top of the building. "Oh yeah, there's one other guy you pissed off: His name was Phil." Just then, the portal opens.
     The alien army rushes in, blasting everything in sight. Taxis are blasted to bits, cars are flying, fires break out, streets are uprooted. Citizens scramble for cover, including Beth the pretty waitress Cap met. Thor lands and engages his brother in combat; the two have an elaborate battle at the top of the building. On the ground, police cars are screaming into the area, so are military police vehicles. The jet somehow crashlands without seeming to harm civilians; apparently Clint Barton is the best pilot this side of Anakin Skywalker. Another wave of Chitauri enter; these riding jet-ski-like machines and techno-whale creatures. It's bad. "Stark...you seeing this?" "Seeing....still working on believing." Loki slips away from Thor's clutches, hitching a ride on one of the jet-skis. Cap runs to save a bunch of trapped civilians, while Black Widow holds off an attack as Hawkeye evacuates a city bus. "It's just like Budapest all over again," she says as they fire away. "You and I remember Budapest very differently." Cap directs policemen to move citizens away from the main battle area, Iron Man is keeping the whale-creatures distracted up top, more bits of buildings are crashing down, lots of slicing and stabbing and shooting and imminent danger everywhere. Thor flies down to where the rest of the team is after trying unsuccessfully to power down the Tesseract. Right then Banner shows up, driving an old moped. "So...this all seems...horrible." he greets them. "I've seen worse," Romanoff says matter-of-factly. "I'm sorry." "No...we could use a little worse." she nods. Cap tells Stark that Banner's here, he replies that the party's moving their way. Sure enough, immediately afterward comes a whale. "I...I don't see how that's a party," Natasha looks puzzled. "Doctor, this might be a really good time to get angry," Cap instructs. Banner Hulks out and punches the whale in the jaw; stopping it cold. From there, it's an easy shot for Iron Man to launch a missile into the thing, and it explodes in a fiery death. Selvig has regained consciousness by now. Loki tells The Other to send the rest.
     So....along come at least three more whale-creatures and an innumerable amount more of the Chitauri, Cap barks out a gameplan and everyone gets to work. Hulk smashes all the paper men he sees. Thor slows the flood entering the sky. Iron Man sails around as bait, Hawkeye's perched on a building picking them off one at a time(does the dude never runs out of arrows?), and Cap and Widow are manning the streets. More shooting and punching and daring feats of bravery/stupidity/necessity(your choice). Romanoff hijacks a jet-ski(they're much larger than they seem). Hulk slows down a whale enough that Thor can give it a good whack with Mjolnir, and together they drive the whale into an old cathedral.
     On the Helicarrier, Fury is being called into a videoconference meeting with the World Security Council. "The Council has made a decision." "I recognize that the Council has made a decision. But given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it," Fury defies them. "Until my team has proved that they cannot defend that island(Manhattan), I will not authorize a nuclear strike against a civilian population!" "If we don't send it out, we lose everything." a Councilmember counters. "If I send that bird out, we already have." Fury hangs up.
     Natasha's jet-ski is now being chased by the one Loki is driving. "Nat, what're you doing?" Hawkeye wonders. "Uh....little help?!" "I'm on it." He launches an arrow straight towards Loki's ear....which he catches effortlessly. The arrow then blows up, sending Loki back to Stark Tower along with Romanoff. The Hulk then beats Loki senseless, and Selvig reveals the existence of a self-destruct button, a safety for the machine. It's the sceptre. Tony's taking on a whale. "JARVIS, you ever hear the story of Jonah?" "I wouldn't consider him a role model," the elaborate computer system answers. Nevertheless, Tony rams his way through the entire creature, killing it and however many Chitauri were using it as a taxi. Hulk's facing at least fifteen jet-skis, Hawkeye almost as many.
     The Council overrides Fury's decision, claiming he is no longer in authority and thus the pilots' bombing run is a go. Fury brings one fighter jet down on the runway with a bazooka, but another right behind it gets loose. Time for an urgent message, left urgently. "Stark, there's a missile heading straight for the city." "How long?" "You've got three minutes." Thirty seconds later, according to the radio, the package is sent. Not knowing any of this, Thor and Cap work together on the ground, while Selvig and Natasha try to shut the portal down. She tells the others of the this development, Cap gives it a green light. Stark immediately negates that message, telling them about the nuke, now incoming less than a minute away. He plans to take the bomb up the portal. "Shall I call Miss Potts?" JARVIS asks. "May as well." On her plane, Pepper's too engrossed in the tragedy to notice her phone is ringing. As Iron Man disappears into space, the S.H.I.E.L.D. staff cheers, while Fury and Hill know the truth; it's a suicide mission. The missile hits a vague ship-looking object, destroying it, shutting down all functions of the Chitauri and their whales. Tony begins his slow, terrifying descent, the superheated energy coming steadily closer. Knowing he probably won't make it back. The rest of the team stares at the sky, anxious. On Cap's order, Natasha closes the portal, sealing off the wave of annihilation. Stark slips through at the last second, never slowing down for an instant. Thor winds up to come to the rescue, but Hulk leaps out and scoops up the man, deflecting and absorbing the otherwise-fatal forces of gravity. Thor and Cap run to the prone man on the cratered pavement. They look at each other. Is he -? The Hulk bellows in a grieving manner. This bellow wakes Tony up. "What just happened? Please tell me nobody tried to kiss me." Steve's gaze is far-off, in Europe, likely, and seventy years away, but he answers slowly. "We won. It's over." Maybe World War II finally ended. Stark looks relieved. Everyone is exhausted beyond belief. "Have you guys ever had shawarma? I don't know what it is, but I want to try it." "We're not finished yet," Thor tells him.
     Loki awakens to find two master assassins(one with a drawn bow), a super soldier, a green rage monster, his brother the warrior and a wrathful Tony Stark all staring down at him. None of them look too happy. "If it's all the same to you, I think I'll have that drink now."
     Folks begin picking up the debris, writing letters in thanks, lighting candles at a Mass, getting Stark shaves or Captain America tattoos, graffiti-ing their appreciation for the Avengers. Some don't know what to believe, "...it just seems like there's a lot they're not telling us." Some think it was a hoax. "Superheroes? In New York? Give me a break." Stan Lee comments to a TV newscrew. Politicians and talk-show analysts give their opinions and thoughts. "These so-called heroes have to be held responsible for the destruction of the city. This was their fight. Where are they now?... "What, that this is all somehow their fault?" Beth the waitress asks, incredulous, during an interview. "Captain America saved my life. Wherever he is, and wherever any of them are, I would just....I would want to say thank you."
     The Council wants answers. Fury coolly replies that the Avengers have earned a leave of absence from the index of gifted individuals, so he isn't tracking their current whereabouts. And the Tesseract? It's out of this world. "That's not your call." "I didn't make it. Just didn't argue with the god that did." Thor and Loki, bound for punishment, return to Asgard with the Tesseract. "I don't think you understand what you started, letting the Avengers loose on this world," a Councilmember frowns from on high. "They're dangerous." "They surely are," Fury agrees. "and the whole world knows it. Every. World. Knows it." "Was that the point of all this? A statement?" "A promise." Fury exits the conversation, and Hill wants to know how things work now. "They've gone their separate ways, so...some pretty extremely far. If we get into a situation like this again, what happens then?" "They'll come back." "You really sure about that?" "I am." "Why?" Fury stares out the window. "Because we need them to." Hill evidently doesn't agree, but wisely doesn't say anything.
     Inside Stark Tower, now with just the large "A" remaining outside, remodeling is taking place, and Tony and Pepper are working on blueprints and designs for the next building.
     PS - In space, The Other is speaking before the being on the throne. "Humanssss....they were not the cowering wretches we were promised. They are unruly, and therefore can not be ruled. To challenge them is to court death." The being on the throne grins. He is Thanos. (That's going to be terribly important in the future, as he's one of the galaxy's most awful and despicable tyrants. See Guardians for more information there, but we'll have to wait and see what happens here.)
     PPS - They really did go to the restaurant after confronting Loki. The employees are closing up for the night, and the team is wearily chewing their food. (Shawarma is apparently kind of like Arabic barbecue, something like a Greek gyro.)

     So, yeah, this is different than most of the other superhero movies. Bigger in scope, in aliens, in battle scenes while still allowing character development and memorable one-liners. It took most of two days to write this review because of that. The main point, I guess, is that you don't have to like each other in order to work together(though that definitely helps). What matters, ultimately, is that the job gets done. So if you've only seen it because everyone is talking about it(like you would The Breakfast Club, Jurassic Park, Days of Thunder or Napoleon Dynamite), you'll probably enjoy it. And if you love all things Marvel(for example, great storytelling, compelling characters, interwoven storylines, snark....) then it's a must-see.

* - Phase One of the MCU consists of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers, and also the One-Shot short films The Consultant and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer. 
     Phase Two is made up of Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy; the first two seasons of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; the One-Shots Item 47, Agent Carter, and All Hail The King; and the as-yet-unreleased Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man. 

Sleepless in Seattle

     Sleepless in Seattle is an impossible-to-categorize 1993 film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. In some ways it's a comedy; yet the plot centers around Hanks' grief after his character's wife died. So most of the time it feels kind of like a drama, but there's a lot of subtle comedy throughout. You could say it's sort of a love story, but the leads don't know each other. So....it's complicated. But really good. And a quick warning: This review will be super-long and detailed.

     In general, there are basically three main cities in American moviedom: Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. If it's set on the West Coast, it'll be in LA, for obvious reasons. (L.A. Confidential, Speed, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Chinatown, etc) If it's on the East Coast, then it's NYC, since they're pretty much alike as far as size and everything(King Kong, An Affair to Remember, What About Bob?, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Night at the Museum, Captain America: The First Avenger, Godzilla, Elf, etc.). Besides, NYC was originally the home of the film industry before everyone left for California. And they have all the book industry and Broadway and everything else. If it's somewhere in between, then it'll take place in Chicago(While You Were Sleeping, Home Alone, The Breakfast Club, A League of Their Own, etc).
     You might include San Francisco and Washington, D.C. as the "back-up" cities, since if it's going to be in a city that's none of the following, likely one or the other will be where most of the action takes place. (The Maltese Falcon, Homeward Bound, Monsters Vs. Aliens for San Francisco, and for D.C., Dave, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and generally everything related to government or any of those where the White House gets destroyed.) And slightly behind them is Philadelphia(National Treasure, the Rocky series, Invincible, The Village, The Sixth Sense, Silver Linings Playbook).
     Some movies even manage to include more than one of the main cities, for example, Searching for Bobby Fischer, National Treasure or Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, plus many others that I can't think of at the moment. But it's pretty much an endless loop: movies are set there because they always have been, and it's convenient, and so more movies are set there, because it's what's always been done. Books do this, too; The Princess Bride is a good example, as the narrator grew up in Chicago and now lives in New York.
     There are some exceptions, of course; if it's adapted from a book it'll generally stay wherever the material was set, for example; somewhere in the Deep South(Hope Floats, The Blind Side, To Kill A Mockingbird, Steel Magnolias). Minneapolis is home base for the Mighty Ducks trilogy and Contagion. Or if there's a real-life college that's the setting, then that's an exception, too. (Legally Blonde, We Are Marshall, Rudy). And there's the ever-popular small Texas town(Friday Night Lights, The Big Green, The Astronaut Farmer, The Rookie).
     But in general, most cities just aren't ever mentioned in literature or film. That's why O. Henry wrote a story about Nashville, because somebody said that a good story couldn't be made about anywhere than NYC. He thought it sounded like a good challenge, and so his friend randomly pointed at an atlas, and his finger landed on Nashville. It's a good story. But anyway, you just don't see movies set in Kansas City, Boise, Louisville, Tulsa, Portland or Wichita.
     Which is why Sleepless in Seattle is so interesting. It's one of those films that's set partially in Chicago, D.C. and New York, but the main settings are Seattle and Baltimore - Both real places with lots of stories and real people, but they're unusual.

     The movie opens in a Chicago cemetery around June 12, 1991, where Sam Baldwin is trying to comfort his son Jonah(and himself). Talking about his wife, Jonah's mother: "...Mommy got sick. And it happened just like that....There wasn't anything anybody could do. It isn't fair - there's no reason - but if we start asking 'Why?', we'll go crazy." After the funeral, Sam's sister Suzy tries to make sure they won't starve; providing Tupperware containers of food and quizzing him on basic food preparation.
     We then cut to Sam's office at work; he's an architect. A concerned co-worker gives him his psychiatrist's phone number, to which Sam responds by piling a stack of business cards ranging from loss-of-spouse support groups to the Chicago Cancer Family Network to tons of others on the desk. "They say try all these things...give or get hugs...why not work? Work hard! Work will save you! Work is the only thing that will see you through this!" The coworker looks at him, surprised. "Don't mind him...he's just a guy who's lost his wife." Sam says of himself in third-person. (All of this in the first two minutes!) "What I think we really need is...a change." "That's a good idea; take a couple weeks off, go fishing..." "No, I mean like real change. A change of city. Someplace where every time I go around a corner I don't think of Maggie." "Where you gonna go?" "I was thinking about Seattle."
     Cut to Seattle airport, Suzy and her husband Gary are there to help with settling in. And being a meddling sister who cares, she tries to talk him into thinking about dating again. He's not buying it.
     At this point, the opening credits begin rolling. And ordinarily that's just a fact you accept and move on with the next scene. But this is different; because we see space, stretched over a map of the USA, and as every name pops up and disappears, there's a star in the sky. And one of those stars is a shooting star, trailing along on its way...
     Bringing us across the country to Baltimore, eighteen months later. It's a fantastic transition. It's Christmastime, and Annie Reed and her fiance Walter are on their way to a get-together with her family, he's trying to figure out which people have which stories and quirks attached to them. (Because, really, all families do.) We get so much information about the characters and the world they live in right off the bat! From a storytelling perspective, it's awesome, because it draws the audience in immediately, and even better, makes a great first impression. So, over Christmas dinner with her large extended family, Annie announces her engagement. We also learn that Walter is an associate publisher and is allergic to everything, including flowers, nuts of all types and strawberries.
     Annie's mom digs her wedding dress out of the attic for Annie to try on, and Annie tells her mom how they met: At a sandwich shop, they got each other's solely-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches by mistake; hers on whole wheat(Walter was allergic to whole wheat as well) and his on white. Annie's mom rambles on about true love and magical first impressions and intuitions, which Annie totally blows off as superstitious and old-fashioned. Still, it kind of worries her...
     So Annie's driving along the highway to D.C. to visit Walter's parents, singing off-key Christmas carols along with the radio. She changes the channel to Dr. Marcia Fieldstone's late-night call-in advice program, "You and Your Emotions". One of the callers is a little eight-year-old boy named Jonah, who's worried about his dad. His Christmas wish is that his dad can get a new wife. "You don't like the one he has now?" Dr. Fieldstone asks, amused. "That's the problem," Jonah says seriously. "He doesn't have one." "Where's your mom?" "She died." Dr. Fieldstone, becomes instantly sympathetic and tries to help, and Annie and everybody else in the listening audience feels just awful. She yells at the radio, arguing that Dr. Fieldstone's plan to help Jonah's dad is a terrible idea.
     In Seattle, Jonah calls to Sam, who grouchily comes inside from staring at nothing out on the deck. He does that a lot. He gets Sam on the phone, who is (of course) suspicious, and thinks Dr. Fieldstone's plan to help him is a terrible idea. Jonah tries to get him to talk. "Dad, please? She's a doctor." "A doctor of what? Her first name could be Doctor!" He finally agrees, reluctantly.
     It's awkward at first, but Annie and everyone else is starting to get interested, wondering what's going to happen. Jonah helps things along, answering a few of Dr. Marcia's questions, like is Sam sleeping at night(he doesn't sleep at all). "How do you know that?" "I live here, Dad." Maggie loved Christmas, and...it's just not the same without her. "Could it be that you need someone just as much as Jonah does?" "Yes!" Annie answers the radio, surprising herself. "This is kinda fun. And helpful!" Sam tells Jonah.
     Annie pulls into a diner for a cup of tea, where the waitresses and customers are listening Dr. Marcia's show, too. The waitresses are arguing over what kind of person Sam is, disgusting Annie with their crude comments. She pulls back onto the highway as fast as possible.
     Sometime later(Jonah is asleep by now), Sam's still on the phone. To kind of wrap up, Dr. Marcia asks what he's going to do. He thinks a minute. "Well...I'm gonna get out of bed; every morning, and breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while....I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed and breathe in and out...and then after a while I won't have to think about how..I had it great and perfect for a while." Annie's in tears now. "Sam, tell me what was so special about your wife." Dr. Marcia instructs. Sam smiles, "Well, how long is your program? Well, it was...a million tiny little things, that when you added them all up...it meant we were supposed to be together. And I knew it. ...It was like.." "Magic." Annie mutters to herself, at the exact same time Sam says the same word. A thoughtful Annie pulls up at Walter's parent's home as the show is ending, and Sam promises to call again and let Dr Marcia know how he's dong.
     I just used five paragraphs to describe one sequence....wow. Can't remember ever doing that before.
     Anyway, several days later we're at the Baltimore Sun office, where Annie works as a reporter. In the break room, one of her fellow reporters is pitching a story about the Soup Nazi to her editor, Becky(Rosie O'Donnell), with another reporter listening. Becky mentions that all the phone services in Chicago were tied up for two hours on Christmas Eve after some kid called a radio show saying his dad needed a new wife. Two thousand women had called the station asking for the guy's number. The two other reporters(both guys) look unimpressed. Annie's ears perk up, and she dives into the conversation. "I heard him!" She quickly recaps for everybody else the above five paragraphs, going on about how for no reason at all she suddenly started crying, and she and Becky have an exchange about cows and those phone company's commercials that are all emotional. The two guys look even more unimpressed and uncomfortable. Becky suggests Annie write a story on the whole thing. Everyone argues for a minute over some popular book that everyone was talking about. Annie, suddenly, "If somebody is a widowER, why do we say he was widowed? Why don't they say it 'widowERed'?" (I love this quote. It's the weird kind of question you ask often when you spend a lot of time around words.) Weird looks from everyone else. "I was just wondering."
     On New Year's Eve, Walter and Annie make plans to meet in New York on Valentine's weekend. In Seattle, Sam wakes Jonah up so they can watch the Times Square ball drop. They've spent most of the night eating take-out and playing Monopoly. Sam tucks Jonah into bed, then wanders outside onto the deck as people shoot off fireworks. He wearily flops down onto the couch and falls asleep, dreaming about Maggie.
     Remember, his job is as an architect, so he's constantly among construction projects at various clients' houses. This contractor he often works with, Jay(Rob Reiner), is there complaining about how all the lady's kitchen cabinets will have to be moved several inches to the left in order to fit the new refrigerator. And Jay and the client and the other guy they work with; really everybody in Seattle, it seems, has heard Sam on the radio. And they won't stop asking him about it. And the real problem is, the wall that would need to be taken our for this to work is load-bearing. (Amazing how you notice these things after remodeling a house.) That will take at least(?) twelve more weeks to work around, to be on the safe side.
     Well, after that wonderful Monday at work, he gets home and there's this gigantic pile of letters from people all over the country. More specifically, letters from women who wish Sam was their husband. So he and Jonah begin digging through the enormous heap. Sam uses this as a geography lesson, since Jonah has no idea where Tulsa is, or where Oklahoma is. (Problem! Yes, Seattle is in the Pacific Northwest. But they lived in Chicago before that, and Illinois isn't exactly immediately recognizable as a place folks live. Besides, Oklahoma's the most distinctive shape of any of them, and only two states away from Illinois. If this story happened twenty years later, he would certainly know where Oklahoma was, at any rate; after the Sonics packed up.) "No," Sam says. "She looks like my third-grade teacher, and I hated my third-grade teacher. Wait a minute...she IS my third-grade teacher!" He resolves to ignore all the letters that arrive, leaving Jonah to sort through them if he wants to before setting them in the trash can. While they're brushing their teeth that night, Jonah winds up with no warning, "If you find a new wife and all, are you gonna have sex with her?" Sam's shocked, of course, as he should be. "Well, I certainly hope so!" He then questions where Jonah's heard of such things.
     Walter's allergies are further driven home in the next scene, and HE SNORES. LOUDLY AND OBVIOUSLY. So Annie wanders into the kitchen and looks for a snack. (Mute this scene, audio isn't necessary to understand. And besides, there's sappy music on the soundtrack.) She flips on the kitchen radio, a highlight collection of Dr. Marcia's show is on. (Turn the sound back on now.) The end of Sam's ("Sleepless in Seattle", in radiospeak) call is replayed, and Annie sits down at the table, peels an apple and listens. It sounds simple, but it's the intensity with which she listens...it's some of the best acting I've ever seen.
     Later that morning/the next day(Tuesday-ish) she drives over to her brother Dennis' office for some advice. It's a good exchange of grown-up siblings trying to sort out issues. After Annie incoherently explains what's up, Dennis answers, not fully up to speed yet: "It rains nine months of the year in Seattle." "I know! I do NOT want to move to Seattle. But what I really don't want to do is end up always wondering what might have happened and knowing I could have done something...."
     Meanwhile, back in Seattle, Jay tries to give Sam advice on dating in the 90's, which is confusing and bewildering. "Just think of Cary Grant, how he did things. All...suave and confident and everything." It takes a while to think over. But eventually Sam decides to call somebody - anybody - the decorator of that house with the cabinet problem - to see if she wants to go on a date. We also meet Jonah's friend Jessica, the only person around his age that he seems to know(besides somebody named Jed, who has cable). This decorator, Tori, agrees to go on a date with Sam on Friday at 7:30.
     In Baltimore, Annie's working on the "Sleepless in Seattle" story, Becky's watching the Cary Grant movie An Affair to Remember. Becky points out that Annie's a basketcase; she started working on a letter to the guy herself! (Annie reading) "I would like to meet you." That boat-docking scene on the TV. "At the Empire State Building," Becky says. "Sure, why not? I can squeeze it in." (Annie types this out.) "What am I saying?!" (Crumples letter and flops on couch to watch rest of movie.) They watch in tears, quoting along. "Men never get this movie." (Insert some Little Rascals reference here, like Stymie loudly proclaiming "No we don't!".)
     While they're crying over some silly movie, Jonah's having a nightmare that the house is sinking and calling for his mom. Sam runs to the rescue, comforting him as best he knows how. They talk about Maggie. "I'm starting to forget her." a very worried Jonah says. Sam gives him a hug. "She could peel an apple in one long, curly strip....The whole apple. I love you, Jonah." (From a storytelling perspective, this is terrific information. We just saw someone peeling an apple....)
     Montage of quick cuts as Sam stares off along the Sound, thinking on his deck, while Annie walks around Baltimore Harbor to think. (This is a good example of film storytelling, though I can't explain exactly why it's good film storytelling.)
     The next day Annie gets started for real on that "Sleepless in Seattle" story, and she uses her journalistic skills to find info about Sam. She has an Orioles cap decorating her desklamp.
    Friday night Sam's EXTREMELY nervous about this whole 'dating' thing. Like, Danny Tanner handles it well compared to him. (That's an interesting idea; DJ or Joey could have heard the show, talked Danny into offering Sam advice somehow...that's what happens when you watch movies/shows from this time period....you invent connections that could tie everything together in an interesting, curveball-like way.) Anyway, Jonah finds Annie's letter and starts to read it. "Dad! Look at this!" He skims quickly, noting that the letter mentions that Brooks Robinson was the greatest third baseman of all time. They walk over to the map. "See? Seattle's here. And Baltimore's there. There's like...twenty-six states in between. That's not gonna work." He then leaves for his date with the decorator, which goes...uh, fine, I guess? Awkward, but...you gotta start somewhere. It goes well enough that she offers to cook him and Jonah a meal several nights later.
     Jonah doesn't like her. (For one thing, she can't cook. She doesn't much care for baseball, she doesn't enjoy camping. And she has this high-pitched cackle.) Sam and Tori complain about their mutual client, who's now on her sixth painter and suddenly she wants the fireplace rebricked. And then....Sam kisses her! So, Jonah calls Dr. Marcia's show.
     So he's on the air, complaining, and then Annie gets woken up by Becky's phone call complaining that Annie's got her hooked and informing her that Jonah's on the show again. Dr. Marcia isn't helpful enough this time; Jonah hangs up and screams bloody murder. With getting up so suddenly in the middle of the night and then the radio and everything....Annie's worn to a frazzle.
     The next day Jonah shows Jessica the "good" letter. She suggests that he write to Annie, as it's "YOH"(Your Only Hope. Jessica'd be a master texter.) So they write and mail the letter, and in Baltimore, Becky agrees that this story needs to be investigated more closely. So the letter crosses West Coast to East Coast, while Annie's on the flight going the other way. (The opening-credits map is shown again, as it tracks her flight.) Jonah and Sam are at Seattle International Airport anyway, because Tori the annoying decorator is going on a business trip someplace. Jonah's impolite, of course. Sam: "...He's eight." Tori: "He's good at it." As Sam is lecturing his son about good manners in public, the arrivals from an incoming plane walk past(Amazing how much freedom was allowed in pre-9/11 airports....one of the wild things about life in these movies) and Annie happens to be one of the passengers getting off. For some reason, Sam sees this pretty woman walk by, and loses track of where the lecture was going.
     But no matter, there's a fishing expedition to be undertaken! Annie watches from a distance. It's really kind of stalkerish, actually....which is kind of creepy. But Annie knows it's creepy and stupid, so....that's makes it slightly-less-creepy. As a good reporter, she calls her editor that night to give an update. "How did I get here?" "You told a lie and got on a plane?" "That's not what I meant!" So, she tries again the next day. (Wow. This movie covers many, many days.) Also, this particular day is very sunny, like most of the days in Fernfield seem to be in the Air Bud movies. (Fernfield is also in Washington, btw.) She courageously starts to walk up to introduce herself - and a lady comes up and Jonah gives her a great big hug, and then Sam hugs her. So it must be that he's found a girlfriend and this whole trip was just a stupid waste of time...
     It's Sam's sister, Suzy; she and Gary are in town for a visit. There's this woman standing in the middle of the road, and she nearly gets run over by a semi. And it's that woman from the airport....Sam wanders over, curious. "Hello." "Hello." the woman answers nervously, and then she immediately leaves and heads home. Becky's anxiously awaiting the report and story, and when she hears it she goes straight to the VCR and plays that scene from An Affair to Remember, noting the weird similarities. Annie freaks out, realizing fully how ridiculous her behavior's been, and then she notices Jonah and Jessica's letter. So she reads it, disgusted at the quality of the writing(she's a reporter, remember?). "The only thing is....she looked like somebody we would've been friends with."
     In Seattle, Sam, Suzy and Gary are talking. "Yes, I saw her in the airport, and then when we picked you guys up. It was very weird, like I knew her." "Hey, at least you're seeing people again, that's a start." Gary says. Jonah complains about Tori. "She laughs like a hyena." "No she doesn't....Okay, well.....Sort of." Sam admits. He then tells Suzy and Gary about Jonah calling the radio show and everything, including that Annie would like to meet them at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day. "Oh! It's like that movie!" Suzy exclaims. "What movie?" Sam and Gary ask. "An Affair to Remember. didn't you guys ever see that?" She then explains the whole thing, breaking down in tears halfway through the summary. Sam, Gary and Jonah stare blankly. "That's a chick's movie," Sam says finally. He and Gary then make fun of Suzy by pretending to cry over the ending of The Dirty Dozen. 
     Maybe she talks them into watching it, because the next day Jonah's watching it at Jessica's house. "This is the best movie I've ever seen in my whole life!" she sobs. "What's so great about it?" Jonah asks, bored. They then hatch a plan for Jonah to fly to New York to meet Annie since his dad won't. (Strains logic in terms of reality, but it makes sense within the movie.)
     We skip ahead in time to around Valentine's Day, and Annie's in New York with Walter. They go shopping for china and stuff. Jonah's disappeared; on a play to NYC, and so Sam quickly follows, trying to catch up. (Another appearance of the map.) Being an eight-year-old, once he gets to the Empire State Building, Jonah begins asking every woman he sees if she's Annie. They aren't. She's having dinner with Walter, where she breaks off her engagement. Sam finds Jonah, and they start to head home. Annie's heading to the Empire State Building, because, yes, it's crazy...but....well, she just has to find out. (And besides, the movie's almost over.) They've just closed, but she convinces the security guard to let her go up and see(he knows the reference; it's his wife's favorite movie). There's nobody up there, it's empty. But there is a little kid's backpack....so, with nothing else to do, she starts inspecting it. There's a teddy bear inside. They come back for the forgotten backpack, and there's this lady there, that one from the airport...."Are you Annie?" Jonah asks. "Yes." "This must be yours." she hands Jonah the teddy bear. "I'm Jonah. This is my dad. His name's Sam." "And who's this?" Annie asks, indicating the teddy bear. "That's Howard." They all walk into the elevator. "It's nice to meet you, Sam." she says. The end.

      So, it's kind of predictable in some ways. And there's an unbelievable amount of luck needed for everything in the plot to work out the way it did. But it works. Because of the way the story's handled throughout, and especially the ending. We don't know what's going to happen next, and so that decision is left for the viewer to decide. If this was a typical movie, that wouldn't have happened, we'd get a completely expected(and unnecessary and unsatisfying) extra scene at the least continuing the tale.
      Did they start dating? Did they get married? Were they both so embarrassed that nothing really ever developed? The movie doesn't answer those questions, and it shouldn't. So, was there a happy ending? I doubt it; since there's a certain set of expectations that come with that phrase, because happy endings usually only happen in fairy tales, and this isn't one of those. Life sort of gets in the way. But I do think they got married eventually, and things went well for the most part, though their new life was full of everyday problems like house payments and cars breaking down and things like that.

An Affair to Remember

     An Affair to Remember is a strange movie made in 1957 that stars Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, full of very long scenes and a bitter outlook on people in general. This review was also posted on Another Lover of the Blade, because I started writing it before creating this blog, so that's why. 

     Nickie Ferrante, aptly described in a Variety review of the film as a "fairly notorious playboy", has just become engaged to a wealthy oil and gravel heiress named Lois Clark, who will soon inherit the staggering fortune of $600 million. (That's roughly over $500 billion in 2014 dollars when you factor in inflation.) He is returning to the U.S. from a trip to Europe on an ocean liner, where he is hounded by curious ordinary people. He meets a lady named Terry McKay, who is engaged to a high-level New York oil businessman named Kenneth Bradley. They talk often, and most of their fellow passengers and the crew think that they're a couple. (This leads to many awkward situations.)
     Terry was trying to become a singer in Boston before she met Kenneth and moved to New York to practice becoming a perfect housewife. And as for Nickie....well, as a little boy says, "Everybody on the ship's talkin' about ya!" When he asks what they're saying, the little boy answers, "I don't know. Every time they start talkin' about ya, they make me leave the room." He's irritatingly good at everything he tries, makes it really difficult to care about the character.
     During a stop on the Italian coast, Nickie visits his grandmother and Terry tags along. This is by far the best sequence(though lengthy - it takes 21 of the 114 minutes) in the film, there's a garden and a collie named Fidel('faithful"). "It's so peaceful here...it's like another world." "Well, it is another world. It's my grandmother's world." "I think I could stay here forever." "Oh, no, no, no!" Grandma admonishes. "It's a good place to sit and remember, but...you have still to create your memories." His grandma mentions that he used to be a painter before quitting due to being scared of failure. Grandma - Janou - is quite meddlesome and overall a nice old lady. As proof of her meddlesomeness, Janou hints often that Nickie and Terry ought to get married. As they leave to go back to the boat, Terry admires Janou's shawl and, being the nice old lady she is, Janou says she'll send it to her. She reminds me, sort of, of Nano, my great-grandma, who was dying at the time I first saw this. 
     After this visit, Nickie and Terry sort of realize that they might love each other, and even more awkwardly avoid each other over the next few days. The last night of the cruise they agree to return to their respective fiance(e)s in New York, and make plans to meet at 5 p.m. on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building on July 1, six months away. At this point, the movie is only half over?Even considering that films moved a lot slower then, this is a dreadfully plodding movie. "What makes life so difficult?" "People."
     Nickie breaks up his engagement on live TV during an interview, and soon after watching the painfully uncomfortable scene on her television Terry breaks up with Kenneth, who takes it ridiculously well. Interviewer: "I'm sure you had some wonderful experiences in Europe." "Yes." "...Would you care to elaborate on that statement?" "No." It goes downhill from there. I'm pretty sure Terry's maid is played by the woman who was Mrs. Ziffel in Green Acres. 
     Terry goes back to Boston and begins a semi-successful singing career again in nightclubs, and Nickie starts painting in earnest, not doing too well. This takes too long to be slammed down our throats.
     On July 1, Terry gets hit by a taxi and is paralyzed from the waist down. Kenneth is disgustingly amicable about paying for Terry's hospital bills and taking care of her, and Nickie thinks she stood him up, waiting until midnight and she never shows.
     A distraught Nickie mopes around for the next six months, Janou has died by this time. A Catholic priest has in pity found Terry a job as a elementary-school music teacher, and we have a jarringly cheerful (and entirely unnecessary) concert  about obeying your conscience by her students. She's too prideful to let him know about her accident, and they awkwardly and unhappily run into each other one night in public. Then there's another performance by Terry's students, and by now it's Christmas.
     The neighbor lady is just leaving Terry's apartment when Nickie walks in. He found an address in the phone book that might have been hers, so he followed in just to see, and, well, there he is. He lies about keeping their appointment, saying he missed it, and so he presumably came to apologize. (Cary Grant also opens this scene by saying, "Hi Debbie," HOW did that not get fixed?!) He tricks her into admitting that she never was there, they verbally dance around the subject, he walking through the living room, she staying put on the couch. (But of course, she's paralyzed; but he doesn't know that.) They get madder and madder at each other; he remembers that Janou had left a package for Terry before she died. A very perturbed Nickie suddenly remembers that some poor crippled woman had liked seeing one of his paintings in the studio, and as it was too sentimental to sell, he told his friend the manager of the studio to give it to the lady. He opens the bedroom door, and in a brilliant bit of photography, we see his face on the left of the screen and the painting's reflection in a mirror on the right. He knows, now. She starts sobbing, "If you can paint, I can walk!" He nods, wiping the tears away with his handkerchief. The End. NO, YOU CAN'T. YOU'RE PARALYZED. And he's leaving New York that night, and why should he stick with her, anyway? It's not like he has the greatest track record with that in the first place...it's a horrible ending to a film that was a complete waste of two hours. Why should the situation change? And if it did, there sure wouldn't be any happy endings. And yet this is supposed to be some kind of joyful reunion where everything ends happily ever after. IT ISN'T. It isn't even an ending, really - if they would have cut it off just after they ran into each other, that would have been an ending.    

     Not sure how I stayed awake through watching it the first time; but then I started writing this review, and left it barely-started for two months and needed to finish it. It feels like it was constructed as a play, and the acting throughout is melodramatic. Most of the extras just stand there looking at the lead talking, and what music there is is over-the-top and incredibly sappy. Really not very impressed at all by this movie, and completely mystified why people love it so much. 
    

Chapter One of a New Venture

     So, if you've been following my other blog, Another Lover of the Blade, then you pretty much know about me. I'm Wes, and I enjoy telling stories. This blog will be dedicated to things I've written, while "Another Lover of the Blade" will still hold all its previous posts, just in future the specifically writing-related ones will be posted on here, and it can go back to more of a "personal" type of thing. (If you were wondering at the titles, (they kind of confuse most folks at first) here's the backstory. (I really love The Princess Bride, okay?)

     Depending on how much time I have to manually retype everything, there will probably be at some point some sample sports recaps, scraps of poetry and song-lyrics-needing-a-melody, essays and short stories. I'm not sure what might happen; but it should be an interesting side project.

The Debate over #NSUProblems

     About two weeks ago, there was a Tahlequah Daily Press story on low morale throughout the Northeastern State University community. I would agree with that statement. It's a major reason I left a couple months ago. On Wednesday The Northeastern published an editorial defending the university.

     The TDP article is focused on administrators and faculty, which I don't know much about, and I'd never heard of most of those who went on-record, though I knew people who really liked Dr. Amy Aldridge-Sanford.
     In the second paragraph, the article mentions that faculty and staff pay is among the low end of Oklahoma regional universities. That is definitely true, as I've heard Mr. Deiter(Comp I), Prof. Semrow(Lit) and Mr. Woods(speech) all mention that in classes, and I'm pretty sure several other instructors have said something like that at other times.
     It also mentions several times that professors are greatly overworked. I would totally agree with that. On average it seemed like most instructors taught at least four to six classes, which were at least two separate courses.
     Dr. Richard Carhart was quoted as saying, "I watched other individuals(teachers) being berated, intimidated or humiliated for simply doing their jobs as best they can." There's no way to prove this happened, unfortunately, but everyone knew that it happened to teachers, and so they indirectly funneled that attitude down at their students. Carhart also stated that he honestly "couldn't wait to leave." That's how I felt most of the time.

     Dr. Isaac Dalanni, former assistant professor of economics, wrote six pages of unpleasant incidents and sent them to the Daily Press, which ranged from "mistreatment of colleagues to poor living conditions for students to stagnant salaries."
     Two of those incidents were mentioned in the article, one which involved a newly-hired professor not receiving his office key for over a week and not getting an email address until several weeks on the job. This instructor got his class schedule by email, which was then changed without his knowledge or consent, and the only way he found out about it was because of a phone call asking "Where are you? Why aren't you here?" on the first day of classes. This doesn't surprise me in the least.
     The other story was of one of his students who graduated, went through commencement and everything, but failed to get a diploma. So for six months the student called and emailed asking what the holdup was, and every time he was told to wait. Finally the student got so fed up that he physically came to campus to see what the problem was, and it was only then that he was told he was two credits shy of graduating. (This had been checked multiple times.) This also doesn't surprise me that much, because I've had this same scenario happen(on a smaller level).

     Dilanni's claim about poor living conditions is right on the (far too exorbitant for the amenities) money, as everyone who lives in the dorms knows. (On the other hand, everyone in Ross knows each other from complaining about the crappy conditions.) That's been well-documented in other posts on this blog. But paying $325-425 a month for a 10'x'14 cinder-block cell, usually shared with someone else? When the seasons are reversed and doors won't lock, ceilings leak and showers and sinks break down frequently? When the elevators are fifty years old and trap folks inside on a routine basis? And the TV and internet connections are really spotty. And that doesn't even include neighbors and noise levels. And the RAs never really seemed to do anything, as far as enforcing rules or customer service went. (Maybe that happens everywhere. Maybe all of these things do.)

     Dilanni elaborated on his view of his former workplace, saying, "I believe that the problems at NSU are systemic. To make NSU into a welcoming, academically challenging and competitive university would take a thorough reorganization." He is now a lecturer of economics at the University of Illinois, which is interestingly (and irrelevantly) where my cousin Logan goes to school.

     That was another thing about it; I know they were mostly gen eds that I took over 56 hours in four semesters, but the majority of my courses weren't very challenging. They were difficult, yes; but challenging and difficult are two very different words, the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning, as Twain wrote.
     Despite what they say in class, what you actually write in an essay or say in a speech doesn't usually matter. And that's extremely disappointing. But the reason that is is because the teachers are overworked; they have 120-150 papers to grade at a time and other projects besides, and sometimes they're taking Master's-level courses of their own. So they simply don't have time to judge/evaluate content. And so what that means for students is, honestly, you could probably write something only very loosely tied to the topic, following the format perfectly, and you would likely receive a decent grade.
     That's messed up.
     But most students don't really care, rolling their eyes when the subject is brought up and saying carelessly, "C's get degrees, y'know?" But most people don't watch Blimey Cow, and so just go along with it. If you pass, great, why strive for excellence?
     That's messed up, too.

     The article mentioned that Carhart wrote a legal brief called "The NSU Syndrome: A Recipe for Mediocrity", which he sent to the governing body of Oklahoma regional universities, and got no response from them.
     In political terms, the power of Northeastern State University is firmly an elite theory system. This means that a select few members control basically all decisions concerning the welfare of the organization/country/institution. And those powers would be those nameless, especially faceless non-entities to most people called administrators, the athletic department(never mind that most of the sports teams have a deplorable lack of talent and the success to show for it), and the Greeks.
     So what happens in this structure? A lot of meaningless talk about the "pride of our institution" and "our (pricey and idealistic and pointless) master plans for the next ten/twenty years" and a lot of money spent in really questionable ways. Like, a lot. $13 million for construction of a brand-new arena when dormitories are literally falling apart. $2 million for planting and near-immediate excavation of decorative baby trees. A probably non-really necessary addition and remodeling of the cafeteria(which looks horrible.) Wilson Hall sits there, proclaiming its haunted status and wishing somehow it could be put into use again, while the continued disuse make it less and less likely that will happen. Seminary Hall's carpet was held together in many places by duct tape. The health clinic is tucked way back into an impossible-to-find corner of campus inside Wyly Hall, which had been condemned as a dorm several years earlier. Uh...what?

     As the TDP article states, "Dilanni indicated the atmosphere at NSU was one of fear and intimidation." On a near-daily basis he would hear colleagues mention they were unhappy with their current job situation, or were scared they would be fired if they publicly opposed the policies of the administration.
     The whole existence of the Media Studies department hinges on this principle, which everyone knows about and says nothing about, because nobody can do anything about it. One instructor mentioned while teaching a journalism course one day that she knew money was disappearing in strange ways, but she couldn't do any type of investigative journalism on the subject because she'd get fired. And the newspaper staff had no chance of writing anything that came close to hard news, because of the Powers That Be and the fact that, really, the Media Studies department as a whole was on extremely thin ice. Really everything we did/do is an accomplishment, Media Studies is such an underdog in pack hierarchy. The magazine was cut out several years ago(before I came to school), the TV program was shut down, and the newspaper was forced into irrelevancy by going all-online. If we students made one "mistake" by practicing the craft we were learning well in sniffing out and telling the populace about a real news story, it would be extremely easy to shutter the entire department down in a heartbeat. (Based on the last couple times anyone tried to cover hard news.)
     So most of what was acceptable is fluffy pieces about things to come in the next week or two, or occasionally about someone receiving an award. People read the newspaper; it was all over the place, and you could talk to random people about what such-and-such an article was about, or mention that you knew somebody quoted or the writer, etc. The extra copies were a key component of many Homecoming floats. But with the department budget cut (again) and advertisers getting harder to find, the publication was moved entirely online and now nobody ever mentions the paper or notices its existence. (It's really hard to remember the name of the website, and there's so many other sites to look at....) Though folks do mark the printed Northeastern's absence.
     The TV program was sort of resurrected last spring, with half the semester to work with, a temporary teacher from Iowa, three cameras, two tripods(one broken), and six semi-working Macs shared among about thirty people, most of whom had near zero experience with Macs or working with video.  So it was an interesting process, but the eight of us in Advanced Video patched together two pilot episodes of a news show that would hopefully restart the program, and there were a fair amount of school commercials that were created. Not really sure how that's doing this semester.

     The Northeastern editorial begins, "Vacant expressions, empty desks and apathetic professors - this seems to be the current portrayal of Northeastern State University." Which is a very good journalistic sentence. It's stating an opinion of the general public, but not commenting one way or the other as to if there's any truth to it.
     The third paragraph brings up a good point that the students of today are hugely invested in social media, and that this story could spread and impact not just the school, but the city of Tahlequah.
     The fourth paragraph, "We as humble students cannot begin to understand the deadly political dance required to run a university of this size. We cannot speak for the inner workings of administration, or how faculty members are treated behind closed doors," is also strictly true. And it comes up nicely on the "Keep things safe but still address the issue" meter.
     The fifth paragraph makes a good point that the general tone of that article did kind of seem biased, which was true. But also, you have to compare that one article to the loads of other NSU stories the TDP has covered over the past year, promoting events like the summer camps and covering games and plays and debates and special speakers and teacher profiles and whatever else. 
     The sixth paragraph, about the opinion that the school is slipping, I don't completely agree with, especially the last sentence, "So do not tell us that our university is mediocre." That's an opinion. (I get that it's an opinion column, but still.) But the point the paragraph makes about there being a flipside to every coin is good. There are, certainly, some good professors.  Dr. Faulds, Prof. Semrow, Dr. Eversole, Cassie, Mr. Shamblin and Mrs. Bowin are the first instructors who spring to mind. And sometimes they do work weekends; and often at night as well.
     That last paragraph is made up mostly of facts. (And, by my count, eight punctuation errors.) Those facts are true. The rah-rah-rah "Go RiverHawks!" spirit is annoying. But, this did appear during Homecoming week. And Homecoming week is when everyone goes "OH MY GOSH, I'M SO HAPPY AND BLESSED TO ATTEND SUCH A WONDERFUL COLLEGE LIKE THIS ONE!" (I'm not much for Homecoming celebrations.) And I'm sure there are a lot of students who actually feel that way. It just seems kinda excessive and fake to have all these elaborate celebratory activities. But, because of that, you need to end on an upbeat note, with all the alumni coming this weekend.

     But Tahlequah is a great town, full of good people. And there's also NSU folks who aren't part of the school like Bob and Deb at the BCM, and Tom and Javier with CCF. And there's all the BCM-related adventures of the past year with SWAT, the worship team and just hanging around the office. But anyway, I just saw the Northeastern editorial this afternoon, and so then I had to look up the original article, and then this editorial or whatever it is just kind of happened. The hashtag title is from student slang, used both in everyday conversation and often on Twitter and Facebook. 
     And, weirdly enough, I'm wearing an NSU T-shirt right now while I finish typing this post. (I just took a shower and grabbed the first clean shirt in the closet, so....)