In 1994, when I was 23, I was shopping for graduate schools. I remembered a paper I’d read by U of O archaeologist Madonna Moss, “Shellfish and Gender.” So I applied to the U of O. A year later Dr. Moss was my graduate advisor.

In 1990, I was obsessed with Twin Peaks. It was set (and filmed) in Washington, but that was the first intimation of the coming Pacific Northwest Cultural Wave (Grunge, Starbucks, Microsoft) that kind of wormed its way into my perceptions of the world.

In 1986, when I was 14, my family took a vacation to the Pacific Northwest. On that trip I first saw the ocean, probably at Neskowin. We stayed in Manzanita. I’d had dreams about the ocean my entire life: swimming in heavy waves, being underwater, sailing, standing on beaches. The beach at Neskowin was exactly like I imagined an Oregon beach should be. Even the smell was familiar; the whole experience was familiar. Cold feet, salt air, windburn, gray sky, woodsmoke, rotting seaweed.

In 1985, I saw the movie Goonies. It was a good enough story but I fell in love with that landscape. Trees and cliffs and rocky beaches, set hard against the restless water.

In 1981, I was in fourth grade, the year that Nebraska children first learn state history. We lived in Scottsbluff, within sight of the famous bluff that featured prominently in diaries of the Oregon Trail. Near at hand were actual physical artifacts of the Trail: the Rebecca Winters Grave, Signature Rock, wagon ruts on Windlass Hill. Much of our state’s history was the story of people moving through. To Oregon. These were gruesome stories of hardship: hunger, starvation, dysentery, Indian attack, freezing in passes, drowing in river crossings. It didn’t take a genius to figure: Oregon must be pretty nice. Nice enough to walk for four to six months across a continent.

The year previous, Mt. St. Helens erupted. It struck me as profoundly weird that people would live in a place with volcanoes. And Bigfoot. And flying saucers. All of which were childhood obsessions.

Also around that time I read a book I think no one else has ever read: The Haunted Cove by Elizabeth Hazelton. I think I got it free from Scholastic Book Club for ordering umpteen other books. It’s a Young People’s Mystery (ala Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew) set on the Oregon Coast. Hazelton did a superb job drawing the Oregon land/seascape. Her prose is why my dreams of the ocean looked exactly like the ocean in Oregon. This obscure book is probably singlehandedly responsible for my ultimate move to Oregon.

We’ve a long gray wet spring that just can’t seem to quit. It’s easy to complain but — for me, anyway — easier to remember: this is why I moved here. I came here for the gray and wet and chilly. So mild, so green; so unlike the fierce wilting humid heat of my childhood summers. The coldgraywet makes me grateful for books, for bicycles, for mud and coffee and hiking boots, for empty beaches and quiet forest trails. It makes the beer taste better.

Orion had a rough night of it two nights ago. Jenny and I do ... OK ... in this heat but he just wasn’t having any of it. Anyway he “slept” in our bed, if by “sleeping” you mean “alternately dozing and awaking and then jumping up and down and expecting Mom and Dad to play with him.”

Last night he made it through the night. (Well, until about 4:30 am which is when he always wakes up.

No, we don’t have A/C, although yesterday we discussed getting a window unit for Orion’s room. I am not above that.

On July 29, 2008, we were wondering if summer would ever arrive in Oregon ... I recall riding the Soma up Hessler Drive and taking a picture of the brooding rainclouds over Mt. Hood.

Anyway, one of the super-fun things about having grown up with Nebraska weather (“Florida summers, Alaska winters!”) but living with Oregon weather is watching the locals fold after two days in stuff that I used to endure for weeks on end. Right now I’m remembering June to July, 1995, when I was working in Arkansas City, Kansas. There were 6 or 7 (I forget) straight weeks of weather above 95°F ... with 80% humidity ... and no nightly temperature drop (last night it got down to 72°F) ... and mosquitos ... From that perspective, Oregon gets about 8 months of weather that would qualify in Nebraska as “Spring,” 1 to 2 (noncontiguous) months of “Summer,” about 5 months of something like “Fall,” and a few weeks of “Winter” every other year or so.

The short bursts of extreme weather in Oregon are perfect. A week of 90°+ heat is just enough to remind me what “summer” feels like, but not enough to make me hate the sun. I couldn’t (and didn’t) cope with that always–74°–and–sunny stuff they get in California. I like my seasons, thank you, preferably in small polite doses. Without mosquitos.

The rains have started.

I like this. This is why I moved to Oregon. I moved here for the cool and gray and damp and peaceful. And the seafood. Everything is better in Oregon in the “winter:” the beaches are empty, the trails are empty, you can go snowshoeing, less traffic when I ride my bike. All the wimpy people who dislike moistness are indoors now, at Powell’s or McMenamin’s. Which are also better in the “winter.”

It is, however, very dark. People here are pale. And let’s not kid ourselves: it starts raining in October and it doesn’t stop until about July. June if we’re lucky.

The really great thing about having grown up in Nebraska is that I have extremely wide latitudes for what I consider “bad weather.” Nebraska gets Florida summers and Alaska winters. The lousiest winter days in Oregon (sleety snow/rain driven hard from the southwest) are about like a typical March morning in Nebraska.

Oregon gets like five or six days in the summer where the mercury tops 90 degrees. But it’s a dry heat.

In 13 years in Oregon, I’ve never lived in a place with air conditioning, or insulation, or double-paned windows. Or bug screens.

Oregon shorts Fall a little bit though.

This past Saturday, Jenny and I saw Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian at the Kennedy School’s “Family Matinee.”¹ It was a good-enough movie I suppose, although a lack of alternatives (most theaters a) aren’t explicitly appropriate places for toddlers and b) don’t serve beer) may have colored both my expectations and experience. Also, Prince Caspian is probably the weakest of the Narnia books, so getting a decent movie out of it would be a challenge I’m sure.

But this isn’t really about Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. It’s about Epic Fantasy Movies, the Genre. I have a simple request for people who produce movies in this genre (see also: Golden Compass). Not even a request, so much as an observation:

The gigantic set-piece battle at the climax of your movie probably sucks.

It sucks because it’s almost certainly unnecessary. For example, the entire tone of Lewis’ Narnia series is personal, not epic. These are stories about some children and their fantastical relationship with a magic lion (who is coincidentally Jesus). They are not stories about the grand sweep of history in a brilliantly-realized alternate world. When it came to realizing the warp and weave of Narnian culture and history, Lewis was clearly making it up as we went along, because that wasn’t the important part of his books. Sure, most of the Narnia books have a battle, but Lewis frankly couldn’t write a decent battle scene to save his life. That’s why they’re each about two pages long. They didn’t need to be lengthy and detailed because they weren’t the center of his stories — the centers of his stories were the talky bits with the magic Jesus lion. If you’re using a Narnia book for the source of your Epic Fantasy Movie, you better pay more attention to the talky Jesus lion parts than to the gigantic climatic battle. The lion is Jesus: he will make the battle turn out OK, and we all know that.

Yes, we know The Lord of the Rings had one awesome climactic battle after another and they just kept getting giganticker and awesomer and we, the audience, loved it. But, and here’s the really important part, we didn’t love the battle because Legolas surfed down the oliphant’s trunk, we loved it because by the time Legolas was surfing down oliphant trunks, we’d spent six hours getting to know and love Legolas, and we really cared about what would happen when he did that trunk-surfing thing.

Also: Tolkien wrote really awesome battle scenes. They went on for pages and pages. That’s because Tolkien was interested in all the stuff Lewis wasn’t, the warp-and-weave-of-imaginary-history stuff. He made up languages, that’s how much he cared. The battles in Lord of the Rings were not a foregone conclusion, because a) there was no magic Jesus animal who would go and deus ex machina the outcome for us, and b) the battles really really mattered to Tolkien, and to Middle Earth. Peter Jackson could have filmed those battle scenes in claymation and we’d have had the same amount of emotion invested in Legolas, Middle Earth, and the outcome of the battle. That’s why they worked, and yours don’t.

So, to reiterate:

When you’re making an Epic Fantasy Movie based on a book, and the book devotes 1% of its space to a battle, don’t make the battle in your movie twenty minutes long. It will suck and we won’t be impressed. Except with how sucky it is.

Notes

¹ For those of you unfamiliar with McMenamin’s Kennedy School, it features a brew-and-view movie theater, a brilliant concept even without the Family Matinee.

“Brew-and-view” defined: second-run movie theater that serves beer and food (usually pizza). Tickets usually cost $2 or $3, and the beer & food are usual bar prices. We can see a movie, eat a meal, and drink beer at a brew-and-view for less than the admission price (usually $8 or $9 each) at a first-run theater.

McMenamin’s is a Pacific Northwest chain of brewpubs and related venues (such as movie theaters, hotels, and chip-and-putt golf courses — which all serve beer, natch). A favorite Oregon passtime is to bitch about McMenamins’ substandard [beer|food|service|ubiquity], which gives you a sense of how awesome Oregon can be at times. That’s like saying “a favorite Oregon passtime is bitching about the substandard quality of our gumdrop trees and chocolate bonbon bushes.”

The “Family Matinee” or “Mommy Matinee” is a local innovation where families with very young children are encouraged to bring their toddlers to the movie. The theory being, if all the kids are crying, you won’t stress because your kid is crying. It’s a pretty good theory.

The woman heroically coordinating my 20th high school reunion sent a mass email requesting RSVPs. The putative event is a year away. I’m inclined to just say “yes,” but with my life, it’s hard to estimate my ability to attend something like a high school reunion as much as a year in advance. A year ago, we were living in China with no kids, no car, no house, and no furniture. We have since corrected those omissions.

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of our return from China. We literally descended through fireworks; I saw Independence Day 2007 from above.

It’s been a busy year. I haven’t been on airplane at all in the last 12 months.

From 1995 to 2003, somehow I managed to visit Eugene at least once a year. For eight years, when I thought of “Oregon” the place I pictured, instinctively (and a little bit sadly), was “Eugene.” Since my brother moved to Portland, I haven’t so much as driven through.

I haven’t been back to Nebraska — my home state — since the summer of 2004. Thus marking the longest period of my life that I’ve gone without setting foot on native soil.

Ten years ago, I had every intention of attending my 10-year reunion. I even paid for a ticket, filled out an entry for the facebook, and everything. Then I was laid off from what would be my last-ever archaeology job ... which layoff was approximately coincident with a move from Southern California (back) to Oregon; my first wedding (the less said, the better); and launching a glorious new career in web design. I pretty literally forgot I had a high school reunion to attend.