So, my dear friends, Wall*e has been reviewed to death in the few weeks since its introduction. In my flist alone the wickedly sharp minds of laguera25,thelauderdale, and cats_n_crying have all attacked it, but I have only just now seen it and wish to lay out my own thoughts. I also wish to avoid having to think up some fictional thought to write about tonight, so this it shall be.

I found the Earth-based portion of the movie at the beginning incredibly sad and rather lonely- the little robot that could is stuck on a world, essentially alone except for a roach and the corpses of his deceased comrades. The filmmakers tactfully deal with the reality that the Wall*E unit in question essentially cannibalizes his brothers by simply cutting away the actual theft of the treads from off the body of another, and showing his collection of eye/camera units as an integrated part of his collections. Since it’s a kid’s movie, the accidental squishing of the cockroach turns out to be nonfatal, but we do need to understand that Wall*e is truly the last living thing on the planet at the beginning of the film.

The choice and use of the musical Hello Dolly was inspired and lovely. I had thought from the previews that the film would be entirely without dialogue, and I honestly think that they could have pulled that off and simply used the music to convey the budding romance between Wall*e and Eve. It was simple, it was effective, it was lovely. Bravo.

The character designs are rather derivative but not clearly stolen from anything else. Wall*E units, when fully deployed, look a heck of a lot like Johnny Five from the Short Circuit film franchise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6VVELKyhOg&feature=related) and feature some of the same very simple emotive tools: eyes and hands. Also, his temporary “death” at the end of the film when part of his motherboard has to be replaced from his stores suggests a similar personal history: Johnny Five gains his personality and sentience when struck by lightning, and disassembly is likened to death- he is more than the sum of his parts. Wall*E seems to be as well, but apparently enough of it was transferable that it was able to re-establish itself afterwards.

Eve is clearly an iProduct, all seamless white plastic and high tech jimcrackery. She is also about five times as photogenic. She takes the lead in all their Bonnie and Clyde pictures and looks far more frightening than Wall*E. It’s a bit strange to me that something brand fresh new out of the factory, and intended only to be a probe without any human interaction, was able to develop a personality so quickly, or was given an interface that was so human as to show amusement and interest in things with her “eyes.” But it's a useful conceit for the film, and cute as a button, so I will allow it to pass unscathed.

The Auto-Pilot was a huge blinking red nod to the HAL unit from Space Odyssey 2001, as was the music that played at the Captain slowly and ponderously launched himself from his chair and took his first baby steps towards reclaiming his authority. (laguera25 made an interesting quip at the end of her reviewon the subject of the normality of the passengers’ willful and permanent immobility, and since her review is worth forcing you to read in its entirety, I will simply link.)

Day 15 Abbreviated

She did grab my hand, eventually. She started rubbing much more slowly, and much more gently than on the other hand. It was appreciated, actually.
“This okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.” It was more than fine, actually. It was rather lovely. I’ve stopped shaking hands with my right hand for practical reasons since my accident. At first my hand was swathed in bandages, and any attempts were just too painful. After the bandages came off, I switched back to right hand shaking, but there were some… incidents.

Whether someone actually recoiled, or didn’t notice until they were already holding my hand and felt something was missing, it made for an awkward first impression. I am fairly certain it cost me at least one job interview when an incredibly inelegant young woman grabbed my hand, noticed the missing fingers, and knocked coffee over her laptop with her elbow on the withdrawal. A lefthanded shake was unusual, but it gave the other person a hint that there was something wrong. They tended to pick up on it a bit more quickly on their own after that.

Day 12

“Shush- Vader!” The Imperial March played from the speakers, and Dave held his peace. There are certain moments in a relationship one learns that one must not rush: just-back-from-long-trip hugs, foreplay, and, for geeky partnerships, the last half hour of Star Wars Episode V: the Empire Strikes Back.

At the sound of rushing carbonite, Dave was foraging for a beer- Kate glared at him when he came back. One of his few duties as a boyfriend was to be always physically present at the exchange between Leia and Han Solo (“I love you.” “I know.”) before Han got dunked in carbonite. That and spider relocation were one of the few non-negotiables of dating Kate.

“You missed it!” Kate poked him.

“Sorry- I thought there would be a commercial break there.” He hadn’t really, but he was rather thirsty. He passed her his beer in silent apology, and she sipped while Boba Fett made off with his captive.

Finally, the moment of truth arrived: the final fight between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. The commentary that accompanied this was one of the first reasons that he’d noticed Kate from among her group of friends. While they waited this part of the movie out, she was making active commentary about the bloopers and fighting tactics.

“Listen to this, this is the really cool part.” Dave listened obligingly to the silence while Kate held up her index finger like a conductor poised for the next note. “Aaaand, now!” Suddenly Vader appears swinging and takes the hero by surprise. Kate grabbed his beer again before she went on.

“You notice what they did there? How Vader cut out his respirator to sneak up on Luke? He never does that at any other time in the movies- he never has to, in any of the fights or even when he’s talking to other people. He’s so into getting Luke, that he literally wills himself into not breathing so that he can pounce on him.”

“Truly, the man is all that is badass.”

“Shush- Vader!” Dave leaned back as Vader leaned out over the dangling Luke and explained how they could end this conflict and bring order to the galaxy. Kate continued her running commentary.

“Honestly, that’s about the worst job pitch that I have ever heard. I would not take a job that’s best perk was bringing order to the galaxy aaaand now it’s the family business,” Kate drew the words out as Vader revealed Luke’s parentage. “Gee, that makes it sound so appealing.”

“Still, this scene kind of makes Luke for me,” Dave added. “He’s so whiney in training with Yoda, but in an actual fight you throw all this daddy poo at him and he still devises a sneaky way out using the airlocks.”

“I think those things are a garbage chute. But that would be kind of a repeat from the last movie, no?”

“In any case, I am not particularly impressed by the waste treatment options in the future. Particularly how inconsistent they are. First movie, trash gets compacted in a room with an alien tentacle monster. Second movie, the fleet jettisons trash in space before lightspeed, or they have these big chutes in the floating cities that just poop it all out on the planet. Not environmentally sound, these options are.”

“Like Yoda you speak,” Kate replied, and kissed him while she stole his beer again. Dave pretended not to notice and stole it right back.

Day 10
Yield unto the Hive Mind, and all your pain shall cease. Allow us to awaken you to the manifold blessings of Unified Existence…

“No, thank you. I’m not really interested in merging with a Hive Mind.” Jenny interrupted early on, which was the only way to deal with members of the High Church of the Unified Mind- all that personal satisfaction with being part of a single mental entity had a way of making itself very forceful when they showed up your doorstep. Polite but firm was the only way to go.

Defensiveness only shows that you have much to fear in your singular existence. It will only take a moment of your time to explain- “No. Thank you, but I have no interest in becoming a member of Hive Mind, and your time would be better spent elsewhere. Have a nice day.” With that, Jenny smiled and slowly, but clearly, moved to shut the door.

One of the Hive Mind’s physical bodies, an incongruously sweet-looking Indian gentleman of perhaps 60, literally stuck his foot in Jenny’s door. Wait, please! Could we at least leave you some pamphlets?

“No, again, I am not interested. Goodbye.” Jenny glared at the particular body until he grudgingly removed his foot from her door, and then shut it swiftly before he could try again. She stayed by the door to listen to the other personalities argue on the way down the path- the newly converted had a way of being too earnestly, and he’d crossed a line.

Jenny mentally congratulated herself for not yielding to her good manners and inviting them in- that one seemed like he would have taken the invitation to lemonade for a concession to his arguments. She wished she could have told them the plain facts, but there were still some social stigma attached to her beliefs. Even the Hive Mind looked down on Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I feel like this is very rough, but I am sleepy, so I will let it go for now.

Day 8
I will fly. There is nothing to stop me. I will fly.
“James, get down from the roof! Please, listen to me. I know you think that things are bad, but they’ll get better. You don’t have to do this!” A voice from underneath him was screaming and seemed close to tears. James felt a brief pang of sympathy in the faint way he had for all crawling things, but paid it no more attention than the birdsong or the rising alarms.
I will fly. There is nothing to stop me. I will fly.
He leaned closer to the edge of the roof. It was a lovely day, and the winds were right for take-off. He knew this instinctively, the same way he knew that, in leaping off the side of this building, he would not fall. It wasn’t even a question of faith. Some things go deeper.
I will fly. There is nothing to stop me. I will fly.
He took off his shoes, and set them carefully by the edge. He stepped over the low barrier with the slight caution that bare feet bring in the modern world, and then settled himself. The wailing beneath him took on a fevered pitch. He would try to explain to them later about this, but there was only so much that he could do for the moment. He had places to be.
I will fly. There is nothing to stop me. I will fly.
He stepped off the ledge and flew.

***
“What do you mean, he flew?” The detective was starting to get annoyed. There is only so much insanity that a single person can take in one day, and most of it seemed to concentrate into the collection of morbid gawkers that the detective would then have to question and file reports on.

“He stepped off the roof, and he didn’t fall. He flew.” The woman on the other side of the desk was taller than the detective, something the detective noted with dissatisfaction. Still the detective could loom over the suspect with ease while seated, and she did so now while glaring to make sure that the interrogee was perfectly away of what would happen if she continued this chicanery.
“I swear to god, he just walked off the roof and didn’t fall. He didn’t seem to even start flying- he just looked like he was standing in the clouds getting farther and farther off. He was gone.”
“Uh huh. And how do you know this James?”
“He was a friend of mine, sort of. He is incredibly unpushy: I didn’t notice him in this larger section of the office, and I just thought that maybe he was depressed or something, but when we went on a date, he looked incredibly uncomfortable. He said that he was already promised to some one, and that I should leave him alone. Then, next thing I know, he’s come back from stupid meeting with a con and then he started to pack for a trip to god knows where, and then he jumps off the roof the next day.”

Day 6
“We should never have left the ocean at all.”
“Shut up, Mike.”
“Really! The whole process was just embarrassing. I don’t know what to do with myself without gills and these nose things are such a poor decision- they stick right out into your field of vision.”
“Mike. Really. Shut up.”
“Why? We’ve made a bad choice. Let’s just face it. This whole surface idea was a whim on my part and it was just not a good fit for us. We can go back and asked to have it reversed.”
“I like the surface world.”
“Sue, there’s nothing up here but us and some other weird religious fanatics! No society to speak of!”
“Also, no bigger predators to eat us, no competition for food and good places to live in coral reef, no need to throw the weaker relatives out to the sharks when they come by looking for their ‘protection fees.’”
“But we know how to deal with the sharks and the predators. We had family back in the deep- now we’re some sort of new species- my mother wouldn’t even recognize me!”
“Your mother was a salmon, Mike. She wouldn’t recognize any of her hatched eggs, because she died laying you all! “
“As it should be! Don’t tell me your looking forward to this insane idea of mammerailian reproduction- popping live, squirming hatchlings out of your body.”
“Mammalian, Mike. They say it worked out fine in all the test subjects and their spawn.”
“Yeah, the ones who did live through it!”
“You just said that fish should die in spawning. Mike, if you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to be here. You can have the process reversed and go back to fins again. You don’t believe in the Doctrine of Evolution. You shouldn’t have to go through with it if you not a believer.”
“Religion, again! Look, Sue you know I didn’t mean it like that. I’m… glad that you get so much comfort from the idea of a Drier Being. I just…”
“You just think I’m crazy to take it this far? That it’s all a pleasant delusion until I actually start to carry it out? Mike, I believe that fishkind was meant to transcend our wetter nature. We are supposed to ascend to the Drier Realms of Being, and the only way to do that is to give up our gills and breathe.”
“Sue, I didn’t mean anything bad by it.”
“But you’re not happy here on land. This is a dream come true for me, and you’re not happy.”
“No. No, I’m not. But. I love you. So, if this is what you need, I’ll get used to it. I’ll just have to put my best fin forward.”
“Foot, Mike, you have feet now.”
“Yeah, but ‘best foot’ just sounds silly.”

Day 4.
There were reasons why people had started calling Eva “Boss,” all of which came before her taking over as the musical director of the Nosferatu. All of them were now on display as she addressed the assembled gaggle of singers.

“Ladies, first I want to thank y’all so much for all the work you’ve done that’s gotten us here tonight.” Eva was tall, even for a Chinese women, and as a trained singer her voice carried without strain. As usual, her pre-show nerves had dissolved once the task lay before her. Veteran captains under fire on the high seas had something of the same psychotic poise about them. “I am incredibly proud of this group and what we’ve done this year, and y’all have been a pleasure to work with. This is out last performance for this semester and for some of us, including myself, Bruiser, Killer and Sax, this is our last performance with the Nosferatu ever. Let’s make this worth it. We are ready for this. I want you to go out there and sing the house down, because you are that good, and because this, of all audiences, is going to appreciate what you can do. You ladies rock like nobody’s fucking business when you put your minds to it, so I want to see everyone telling all the competition to fuck off and get in line, because this. Is. Our. Year. Now let’s go!”
***
“That was amazing- really great performance.” Jamilla did not notice when the guy in the tux had snuck up next to her until he started to talk to her. He didn’t bother to introduce himself, and combined with his nigglingly familiar good looks, this seemed to suggest that she should already know him from somewhere. Thanking him seemed safe enough.
“They called you Bill Shakespeare?”

“Jill Shakespeare. I do some theater on the side and I’m always the MC at shows. It’s kind of a thing.”

“Ah, that would explain it. Do all the nicknames have a point? I mean, I can understand one or two people, but you all seem to have one. Some kind of initiation thing?”

“It’s kind of a thing in general at the college… Some of us joined already using one, and other people just kind of picked them up after they joined. Einstein gave out a lot of them. But not everyone has a nickname. Er.” Jamilla caught herself. “Well, last year Jessie didn’t have one.”

“Do they all have a story?”

“Eh, more or less. Evageline is Boss because she’s just… a boss. She’s always got a plan, ya know? She used to clash with the last president a lot because of it, but once she got voted President herself she’s been really good and fair about it. Lesse… Well, Genevive is Legs for obvious reasons. The three Sarah’s got their nicknames first, cause we just needed to tell them apart. Einstein (that’s the Latina Sara-with-no-H) got hers cause she’s majoring in physics and she’s just kind of brilliant. Sarah M, the shorter black girl over… there! we called ‘the Lady’-"

“Lemme guess,” he broke in, “Lady Sings the Blues?”

“Nah, she ran the Renaissance Fair at the college in the fall three years running. Everyone in that group called her Lady Sarah, so we just sort of picked it up.

“Now, the last Sarah, the tall black girl, didn’t actually have a real nickname until she started dating Bruiser. Er, that’s Gina. She was kind of screwed up when she got into college- her mom had just died that summer and she’s from California so she couldn’t go home… she ended up getting into a lot of fights. She had a black eye when she auditioned for the group. So we called her Bruiser, and when Sarah S started to date her, she needed some kind of badass nickname. So, Killer. Aw, look, she’s getting Bruiser a Shirley Temple. They’re so cute. Killer really helped straighten Bruiser out. Er. So to speak.”

“They just got married?”

“Yup. They’ve been engaged a while, actually. They couldn’t get married in Massachusetts cause Bruiser isn’t a resident, so they got married here. We were all at the wedding. Ruski was the maid of honor.”

“Wait, which one is the Russian?”

“Oh, um… There! She’s over at the bar too- see the girl with the short little dreads? That’s her. She’s a Russian area studies major, not actually Russian. Her real name’s Margaritte.”

“And who’s the girl next to her?”

“That’s Rocky. I have no idea why she’s called that. Her real name’s Kevina, she really hates it, so she just always introduced herself as Rocky. I wouldn’t even know her real name if it wasn’t part of her school email address.”

“Ok, I think that just leaves ‘Spider-man’ and ‘the Boy’ to explain. Presuming that ‘Sax’ is called that for playing sax?”

“Almost. You ever see Some Like It Hot? Tony Curtis has to cross dress as girl named Josephine who plays sax in an all girl band? Well, our Sax’s real name is Josephine. Now, Spider-Man is really Latifah. She pulled this stunt her freshman year where she hung a giant net filled with water balloons between a couple of buildings on campus. But to get the net up there, she had to climb up and down the outside of both buildings with the net in one hand and a roll of duct tape in her mouth, and then carry up the water balloons in buckets. It was amazing. They still tell the newbies about it every year. So, anyway, good climber, Spider-Man. She tried to get them to change it to Spider-Girl, cause she liked that comic better, but it never stuck.

“Oh, and Lolita is not actually a Lolita. She’s Jane, really, but she always ends up dating these really old and sketchy guys. And she’s so tiny, you know? It’s a little… Nabokov.”

“Okaaay.” He stared across the room at Courtney and looked to be filing that information away. Jamilla began looking for an escape. “But what about ‘The Boy’?”

“She’s tiny and her last name is Mann. I think that explains itself. Oh, look, Boss is waving to me, I’ll just go say hi, real nice meeting you, thank you so much for coming to see the show, have a nice evening.” She made her escape, leaving the familiar looking name to puzzle out her sudden disappearance. She looked back to see him sauntering over to Lolita.

Day 2

Fountain pens were one of those things you just don’t have to deal with these days. Was it any wonder he wouldn’t know there was such a damned fuss about the stupid things? Apparently you have to buy one for five bucks (and five bucks for a stinking pen was enough to make Clive want to smack the stupid grins off the salesgirl’s face), but then you have buy freaking innards for the damned thing to make it work. And the innards have to be same brand, or they don’t work. Ballpoints never pulled this shit on you, thought Clive.

But when the boss asked him for a pen one night at the club and Clive handed him a skinny blue Bic, the boss had got this look on his face: disappointment. But he’d taken the pen anyway and scribbled the note out and handed it back.

“You really gotta get yourself something better’n that, Clive.”
“What, the pen? What’s wrong with it?”
“You look like some kind of kid that can’t keep track of things. You’re making enough money- what are you doing carrying a crappy piece of plastic like that? Get yourself a good fountain pen ‘r something.”

It was hardly the first time that Clive had had to adapt to the boss’ whims. You wanted to work with Hammerhead, you had to work with his theme. Luckily that didn’t mean some crappy schtick like extra arms or those fucked up SS suits like the Red Skull stuck his guys in- with Hammerhead you just had to look like a gangster. All you had to do was wear a suit, and that didn’t seem so hard to Clive. At least at first. Suit, shirt, tie: not too much to deal with, really.

But the boss noticed all these little details. It was never just a matter of putting on a tie and breaking some knees. The suit and vest had to be tailored, the shirt had to be pressed, the socks had to match the suit, the tie had to be silk and not too loud, and the handkerchief in the front pocket had to be linen, white and folded. Monogrammed cufflinks, something Clive would never have bothered with before, had to be hunted down every morning and put to use. Rings were apparently, a matter of taste, but only if they could fit under brass knuckles: anything too big had to come off. The boss wore knuckledusters like he carried a handkerchief- he might need it, he might not, but the outfit was incomplete without them.

Figuring all that out had taken a couple months, and the look still hadn’t come together until Clive finally gave in and put in a standing order with a local florist for a boutonnière. The boss had finally smiled at him when he came into the club that evening, and told Clive that he looked like a man going places. “As long as you keep sticking to the dark colored shirts, I mean,” he’d added. “Blood stains.”

So Clive thought he was looking fine and working his way up the ranks, but every now and then the boss would pull something crazy like this out. Still, he figured, it couldn’t be that hard to please the man on this. It was just a stupid pen.

“You’re just a fucking stupid pen!” Clive could not get the damned ink cartridge into the damned end of the pen- cleaning a gun wasn’t fiddley enough, now he had to do this whenever he wanted to write a check, too?

Something gave under this fingers and the cartridge slid home. Clive tried to screw the barrel back on before something else could go wrong, but then he saw the ink all over his hand and the rapidly spreading black puddle under his right cuff- the cartridge hadn’t fit, it had just exploded.

The boss was the boss and order were orders but Clive was done with the fountain pen. With a growing mix of frustration and annoyance finally reaching its zenith, Clive dumped the pen and the mostly full box of ink cartridges into the trash bin by his now blackened desk. He stripped out of his ruined shirt, swore, and then used the fabric to mop up the puddle of ink before it stained the desk. The soppy mess joined the pen and cartridges with violent squishing sound. Clive damned the whole exercise to hell. Ballpoints worked fast and they didn’t cost you a shirt before you could write a word.

Clive went to bed and dreamed of ruined silk.

A couple of days passed. Clive thought about the boss’ fountain pen. The boss didn’t forget his things often, and Clive had a chance to see that pen every day for a long while. It was a thick old thing of black enamel with a thin band of gold around the middle. The gold was scratched from rubbing against the boss’ knuckledusters, but even allowing for rough use, the pen looked ancient. The boss left it on the table one night to greet some old friends and, curious, Clive picked it up. There was an inscription he hadn’t noticed under all the scars on the surface.

Capone, it read.

Clive clutched at the pen convulsively. Then, slowly and reverently, he put it down back where the boss had left it. He decided to go out and buy himself a new fountain pen.