I hate talking about myself.
It seems tiresome to detail everything that friends, education and big experiences taught me about whom I have become. Ultimately, no one's a better judge than me in regard to personal change. Although I failed to report significant emotional growth or maturity over four years, I use ranch a lot more on everything. I learned suffering is imperative for being funny. I had a friend whose fortune and luck was overly consistent, and he subsequently became much less funny.
In a 1994 interview, Laugh Factory asked Larry David how success had changed his life. He said: "The only change I can really see is that I don't have to shop for pants in stores anymore. I can just call up and they'll bring the pants right over to my house. That's no small thing. Trying on pants is one of the most humiliating things a man can suffer that doesn't involve a woman."
Minor details matter. Life is full of small slices, and meaning and humor can always be squeezed out of the mundane and ritual. Although that was a roundabout, facetious quote, and I might have compared life to an orange, investing oneself in this mantra is truly satisfying even to a misanthrope.
Details are especially key when writing features or reviewing. I learned a great deal from covering music and film for The Daily Collegian. According to Earth Wind & Fire's ghoulish bassist Verdine White, I'm too young to inquire about his band's upcoming album. When Penn State President Graham Spanier had trouble remembering what movie starred Ben Kingsley and Téa Leoni, I helped him out. I will remember these moments.
Reviewing the albums or films of others is endlessly fascinating because you're the spectator to guide the other spectators and provoke discussion. Agreeing or disagreeing with a critic is irrelevant. What's more important is what you take away from the review -- what you learn about the process undertaken to create that form of art and your interpretation of the artist's intent.
I got into journalism to be a film critic at a time when specialty positions on newspaper staffs, especially within the arts world, were suffering a blow. The numbers are dwindling and it's going to take a long time before I get in there, and who knows what mischievous behavior I'll be engaging in by that rock bottom point.
Thinking about the future is like standing on the edge of a diving board, which is even scarier for me because I can barely swim (after 11 years of day camp) and have terrible balance, an inadequacy that was hammered home in martial arts class. I can dance, but there's no mind-body coordination going on there.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cartoonist. Now I want to be a movie critic or screenwriter. It took 20 years and all I did was change utensils.
The job market may be bringing me down, but losing myself in cinema will always be cathartic and freeing -- whether or not I'm a part of it. Prospects are momentarily hazy, but I do have a conceivable reason to get up in the morning. I like to get the Daily News.
Mark Maurer is a senior majoring in journalism and is a Daily Collegian film reporter. His e-mail address is mgm5025@psu.edu.
