Your second chance

For those who didn’t get a chance to see the documentary Parallel Words, Parallel Lives on PBS’ Nova last fall when it first aired, well, here is your second chance.  I  highly recommend your viewing this extraordinary documentary.  I’m not sure how much weight my recommendation carries since you most probably don’t know me personally (and you should be thankful for that).  The documentary  provides insight into the quantum mechanics theory of many worlds proffered by Hugh Everett …  mind-blowing particularly for pea brains such as myself (let me provide Exhibit A as to my pea-brain-ness: I am the creator of this CLICK HERE).  It  also provides an introduction into the music of Mark Oliver Everett (aka The Eels, aka Mr. E) not quite mind-blowing but certainly soul-blowing (or at least providing Novocaine for the Soul). His music has taken up residence in my pea brain since I saw this Nova episode.  Here is a link to my previous review of the documentary REALITY HANGS BY A THREAD.  

Check your local PBS listings for Nova for air times -

Nova
Season 35, Episode 13 of 18 :  Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives 

Mark Oliver Everett, better known as E, is the lead singer of U.S. cult band the EELS. What most of his fans don’t know is that Mark’s father, Hugh Everett III, was one of America’s top quantum physicists. In 1957, Hugh Everett came up with a revolutionary theory that predicted the existence of parallel universes. The idea quickly seeped into popular culture, but only recently has it been accepted by mainstream physicists. The film follows the wry and charismatic Mark, who had been estranged from his father, as he travels across America to learn about the father he never knew. It is only by entering the paradoxical world of quantum mechanics that Mark can hope to understand why he was such a stranger to his own father

Enough with the lists already….

Since I promised a “best of” movies I’ve seen outside of a movie theater in 2008, I’ll do it, but only half-heartedly.  I’m tired of the categorizing of things and experiences from best to worst that runs rampant at the beginning of each new year.  I keep hearing that the beginning of the new year is a time for reflection and setting goals – shouldn’t that be done all the time and shouldn’t it be done at a time when its natural for you personally rather than en masse at a set moment?  Okay, so I’m a little tired and cranky… what else is new… here goes:

If push comes to shove, I’d have to say the best movie I saw on DVD or TV in the past 12 months would be…. drum roll…. uhm, …… uh…. I got nothing.  To me “best of” means something that immediately comes to mind, that so towered above all others that it stands out immediately.  I saw a lot of films and movies at home this year but right now – zilch, nadita de nada, nothing that I would call the “best.”  

If I had to pick the one thing I saw this year that opened up new avenues of awareness and thought, that introduced me to new concepts and new music to boot, it would have to be the PBS screening on Nova of the BBC made documentary “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives.”  After seeing that, I went out of my way to find people to talk to about what I had seen, to explore the concepts, to read further about the Everetts, senior and junior, and their life’s work.    When a piece of film has that kind of an impact, perhaps it qualifies as “best.”  Here is what I wrote about the film in my previous entry if you are interested:

http://amoonshadow.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/reality-hangs-by-a-thread/

As for art and books, I saw and read some wonderful examples of each but I won’t demean them by classifying them as worst or best.   Alright, I grow weary of contradicting myself and all this self-righteous indignation at a question I posed for myself in the first place — I’m taking my cranky self away from the computer and off to do something constructive – like watching the Twilight Zone marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel.

If you believe …

For a couple of weeks now, I have had this song going through my head every morning as I get ready to start my day and it flutters through at various intervals through the day for no apparent reason.  I’m not sure why but I thought perhaps if I placed it here perhaps I could figure it out:

Yeah, yeah, yeah….

Oh and as a p.s., I feel stupid for even admitting this but for anyone who read by previous post “Reality Hangs by a Thread” where I referenced Mark Everett and Hugh Everett and the parallel universes theory and all that.  Well, Mark Everett goes by the name Mr. E  sometimes and it dawned on me today out of the blue the word play there might be intentional … I’m slow…. no wonder quantum mechanics and its sundry theories make me wince in cerebral pain.  Okay, here’s one from Mr. E and Eels

If you have time and/or the inclination search for Eels cover of Can’t Help Falling in Love…. my god, what a great version of this song.  Forget Elvis! Here I’ll start you off go here:   Can’t Help Falling

Reality hangs by a thread …

I was channel surfing last week, stopped on a rerun of the “King of Queens” for a bit and then decided to check out what was on PBS just in case one of my faves, History Detectives, was back on (I can never figure out that show’s schedule).  Instead I came across an image of a bearded man talking about his father, a physicist.  There was something truly engaging about the frankness with which this man was talking about his family and I stayed and watched.  Mark Everett, aka “E,” is the lead singer of Eels, an L.A. band that was consciously unknown to me.  Subconsciously I had enjoyed their music in the Shrek movies and many other television shows (Scrubs for one) and movies.  Hugh Everett was Mark’s father.  

Hugh Everett was the proponent of the parallel universe theory – the same theory I read about a few years ago that sent me into a mental free fall when I started thinking about what it truly meant and all the implications.  For a non-mathematician and one prone to flights of fantasy, the idea of the existence of  infinite universes where every possibility of every moment is played out is just mind-blowing.  I distinctly remember driving after having read an explanation of the idea on the Internet and just imagining every possible variation of every action I was taking and multiplying that by the actions of everything around me and arggghhhhh….. And what seems to me at this moment in 2008 to be fantastically “out there” in terms of science was put forth in the mid 1950’s by Everett.  Amazing.

But the true reason, you should make sure to watch Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, is the film itself. The examination of the life of Hugh Everett and Mark Everett as it relates to the father/son relationship is given equal if not more weight to the scientific life of Dr. Everett.  It shows Mark going back and discovering who his dad was through meetings with  his father’s colleagues and people who were deeply influenced by his father’s work.  The documentary does not drop to the level of maudlin sentimentality over the facts of the Everett family’s life nor is it some sort of rock exposé.  It just is and it is fascinating to watch.

Mark Everett makes a comment about how we should all be so lucky as to be able to make a documentary about our dads.  He is right.  Check your PBS schedules and make sure to catch this if you can.

Here are some links that give a more cohesive explanation of the film, the Everetts and E:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/

http://www.readmetro.com/show/en/Boston/20081021/1/26/

 http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-eels19-2008oct19,0,3359693.story

The documentary opened doors for me – further exploration into Hugh Everett’s theory (that I will do slowly and carefully, lest I myself take a trip to a parallel universe) and the music of E and the Eels whose lyrics, music, style, whatever you want to call is so in tune with what I am drawn to, that I wonder how I was not truly aware of it before now.  Wow. That was a poorly constructed and convoluted sentence but I can find no other way of structuring the words so that it carries the same meaning.  I don’t think any one will read this far down in the post anyway, so I won’t worry about it too much.

BTW – the film’s director and producer is Louise Lockwood who did an excellent job.  I could find next to nothing about her in a limited IMDB search but I will keep an eye out for her future projects.