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 november 27, 1998from an issue of thirsty plants thank God; a break. my fears that one day caedmon's call would so consume my life and time that i would have no autonomous identity have finally come true. well, perhaps i'm being a little over-dramatic, but that's seriously how it feels sometimes. it seems like we've been running from one thing to the next these days. it's great to be busy, but coming home i realize a little piece of what i'm giving up. as a kid, i always dreamed of making my living writing and playing music, so i suppose it's a sign of my growing up to begin seeing the down side as well. having said that, while taking the good with the bad, the good far outweighs. maybe i just really needed a break. i'm not sure how many of you guys are able to keep up with what we're doing most of the time-or care for that matter- but we've just finished up recording our new record, '40 acres'. the recording ended up taking much longer than we thought it would, which is fine except that it cut nicely into our planned fall tour. therefore we had to cram a fall tour into what was left of the semester. that's actually one of the great things about playing colleges; you are guaranteed a break. either finals or summer break eventually saves us. some bands we know work all year around, and have nothing to make them stop. i don't think i would last long doing that. all this is preface to some point, i'm sure. whether or not i'll get there tonight is yet to be seen. i love thanksgiving. what a great idea. like most holidays, it doesn't seem to have much to do with its historical roots as much as new cultural ideas that were apparently more easily marketed. i suppose that's fine though. in most cases anyway. regardless, my parents, my brother, and i had dinner with my brother's fiancé and her parents and sister. after that, we walked around downtown houston (or uptown, i should say) where they have a huge Christmas tree lighting/perpetual children's choir/fireworks display every year. it's actually really impressive. during the fireworks they also have these cool disney-esque parade floats that come up and down the streets, provided by 2nd baptist church here in town. now since cliff's dad is the pastor there, he gets to (i say 'gets to' as though it's something he counts the days to every year...) ride on the last float with danielle, and other members of his family. this was actually my first year to see all this, so i was very excited when i saw cliff come around that corner. he looked good up on that float. that might be a good idea for a video or something one day... anyway, when he came by my brother and me, we yelled at him and got his attention, and as a joke he stood up and started yelling "april 13th!! april 13th!!" at everyone around us. it was beautiful. april 13th is the release date for '40 acres', by the way. that story might have been a little more exciting for you if i had told you that before. either way, it made us laugh. i wish tomorrow was april 13th. we've worked so hard on this material, and i think we've done as good a record as we're capable of. i'm never happy with a project at this point. that's either a very good, or very bad sign. let's hope for the former. well, now that we've gotten our small talk out of the way, let's get down to business. i've been putting much thought into what to write this time around for thirsty plants, and have had a little bit of a hard time coming up with good subject matter. i usually try and wax theological (and if i didn't have such a wandering mind, they would probably make sense...) for a few pages and just turn it in, but i'm not in that sort of mood tonight for some reason (a rare occurrence, i assure you). i believe this time i'll try to write a dissertation on something else that i love to study; the 'back to the future' trilogy (i was just thinking that it's curious how all great things occur in trinity...). i really hope that all of you in the guild know of my incredible love for these movies. i own the trilogy and watch them with great frequency. in fact, since i've been home in the last few days, i've already watched all three once through. now, rest assured that i could write an entire paper on how much i love all three 'back to the future' movies, and why (please don't ever ask me which i love the best since i love them all individually, much like a mother loves her children). since i've put countless hours into these movies, and consider myself somewhat of an authority on them, i've also become acquainted with their imperfections, of which there are a few. however, the largest one is quite noteworthy. it's something that i noticed after our first tour; after all, there isn't much to do for many, many hours on a bus other than watch movies. i often refer to it as the 'fatal flaw' in the back to the future series. now, understand that it brings me no pleasure to expose this flaw. i do the following simply to further knowledge of these magnificent films. i have gotten to the point where i can watch my way through this and it doesn't faze me, but if this information causes you to be distracted from the overall story line of the movies, please disregard what's been written and forgive me. one other disclaimer before i continue, and this one is especially important. these movies are obviously fiction. they aren't meant to be realistic. this critique does not seek to judge 'back to the future' by the laws that govern nature and physics. please note that i only judge these movies by the guidelines that have been set up by the movies themselves. i will use the very words of doc brown to show that what is portrayed by this particular situation is simply impossible within the guidelines that exist in the universe created by the writers. i believe that as we get into it, you'll see and understand what i'm talking about. we're going to jump right in, so please brace yourselves for temporal displacement... our adventure will start at the beginning of the second 'back to the future' movie. allow me to set the stage and bring you up to speed. doc brown and marty mcfly's adventure has just ended. doc and marty have arrived safely back in 1985, and have found it in much better shape than they left it. since marty interrupted the meeting of his mother and father at the beginning of the first movie, the remainder of the film was devoted to marty's succeeding in pairing up the two, and ensuring his very existence (along with the existence of his brother and sister). having succeeded in that, marty returns and discovers that he has altered the future in very positive ways, both in regards to the existence of his family, and with his father's relationship with bully biff tannen. marty exits the house to find the shiny black truck that he had wished for at the beginning of the movie, and jennifer, his girlfriend, asking him for a ride. just before they can leave they are interrupted by doc brown violently bursting into the driveway from the future. he has news about their kids, and says that something has to be done. immediately the three jump into the plutonium-powered delorean "time machine," and head off to the year 2015. now, where the first movie leaves off, 'back to the future 2' begins. movie 2 starts with a reenactment of that last scene (i say 'reenactment' because the casting director replaced the original jennifer character with elisabeth shue for the remainder of the movies, so the last scene had to be redone). the scene is essentially the same except we see biff walking out of the house to show marty the matchbooks that he had made up for his new auto-detailing business, and seeing the delorean rise from the ground above the trees and disappear, leaving only a hovering pair of fire tracks behind. biff is left puzzled, and the beginning credits start. now that we have a little prologue, we will jump ahead a bit. if you get lost because of a lack of context, you may have to rent (or buy) the second 'back to the future' movie and watch up to this point. we set the scene with marty having succeeded in taking the place of his son at the "cafe 80's," and keeping him from getting involved with griff (biff's grandson) and getting arrested (doc brown went ahead in time to discover that this is the single event that started a chain reaction in marty's family and ruined the lives of his children). marty then goes to the antique shop and buys the legendary "gray's sports almanac" after having an idea for taking gambling statistics back to 1985 with him. the doc pulls the delorean down to the corner to pick up marty and discovers the book on him. doc gives marty and eloquent speech on how he did no invent the time machine to win at gambling, but rather to travel through time. as doc brown is disposing of the almanac, he and marty witness the futuristic police picking up jennifer (the jennifer from 1985) and taking her fingerprint. when they discover that she lives in nearby hilldale, and that she's apparently in no condition to get home on her own, they decide to take her there and drop her off (she had passed out because doc brown had to use the 'sleep inducing neo-algorithm generator' on her upon arriving in 2015, as she was asking too many questions). doc brown realized the potentially grave consequences of jennifer running into her older self at the house, and decides to try and get there before the cops in order to keep that from happening. just before leaving, doc throws away the "sport almanac." after the delorean is gone, we see old biff emerge from behind a screen door, where he was listening all along to doc and marty's conversation. he takes the almanac from the trash, and jumps into a taxi cab to follow the two out to hilldale. because the skyway is jammed, doc and marty arrive too late for their destination. doc asks marty to stay behind with the time vehicle while he gets jennifer and brings her back. marty (as usual) gets distracted by a dog being walked with an electronic collar, and leaves the time machine at the edge of the subdivision. after he's gone, we see old biff arrive in his taxi. with the sports almanac, old biff gets into the time machine and takes off into the sky. all this goes unnoticed by either doc or marty, as they are trying to rescue the fainted young jennifer, after she inevitably ran into her older self. meanwhile, back at the edge of the subdivision, we see old biff arrive back in 2015, without the almanac, and having an apparent heart attack. while trying to get out of the delorean, he breaks off the top of his trusty cane (a small brass fist) and accidentally leaves it in the car. he stumbles off, and that's the last that we see of old biff. doc and marty arrive back at the time vehicle, put jennifer in it, and head back to 1985. they arrive safely, and for a while think that everything is back to normal. it is by no means normal. they arrive to find that none of their houses are their houses, the entire town is run down, marty's father george had been killed years earlier, doc brown himself has been committed for insanity, and biff tannen is powerful and corrupt and rich. after regrouping at doc brown's lab, they formulate a plan for getting things back the way they should be. doc discovers biff's broken cane and the receipt for the sports almanac in the time machine and puts together what happened (old biff had taken the book from 2015, gone back in time to november 5, 1955, and then returned to 2015 with the time vehicle). now, this is important: marty suggests that they simply go into the future and make sure old biff doesn't get the book, so that way he can't go back and give it to himself. doc then correctly points out to marty that if they go into the future of that point and time that they will be in the future of THAT POINT AND TIME. in other words, there's no point in going into the future from where they are, because in reality biff is already powerful and possesses the almanac. doc shows with a diagram how when old biff gave himself the sports almanac he altered future reality, and it skewed off into a tangent reality which he labeled "1985 alt." rather, doc and marty would have to find out when exactly young biff (from 1955) received the sports almanac, go back in time to that point, and keep him from getting it. interestingly, doc then says they'll have to let old biff (from the future) think that he succeeded in giving himself the almanac so that he'll leave with the time machine and return the vehicle to 2015. all the pins are now in place; if i may, allow me to knock them down. i was simply amazed that a man as accomplished and intelligent as doctor brown would have overlooked this obvious impossibility. if the rules that doc brown set up in the above scene are true, then doc and marty would have been stuck in 2015 trying to get the young jennifer and get back to 1985, and none of the rest of this could have happened. unfortunately, they would have been stuck there in the future. here's the problem: old biff was pretty smart to have stolen marty's idea and taken the sports almanac and given it to himself in 1955, but he overlooked one small but important detail. once old biff got to 1955 and successfully gave himself the almanac, there's absolutely no way that he could have gotten back to where (or i should say WHEN) he started. he would be trying to do exactly what doc brown just told marty that they couldn't do. at the point where the biff from 1955 possessed the almanac, old biff had altered future history. he created an alternate reality that would at that moment be in operation. if he tried to get back in the delorean and go back to the year 2015 where he was a poor defeated old man, he would've be able to do it. he could only go into the future of the alternate reality that he had created the moment he handed himself that book. i hope you are beginning to see the problem. in the delorean, old biff would have caused a disruption in the space-time continuum, which might have unraveled the very foundations of time, resulting in a major paradox, and destroying the entire galaxy (granted, that's a worst case scenario...). also, doc, marty, and jennifer would either be stranded there in the future with no transportation home, or disappear from existence altogether (a threat that we saw in the first movie with the picture that marty had of himself and his brother and sister on vacation. you might recall that they were progressively disappearing from the picture, and therefore from existence...). i don't consider this to be a major flaw; just something that takes away from the realism in the context of the movie itself (such as the possession of a hair dryer by marty dressed up as "darth vader from the planet vulcan" while trying to convince the george mcfly of the past (his future father) to take lorraine bates (his future mother) to the 'enchantment under the sea' dance, since futuristic hair dryers such as the one in his belt wouldn't have been available at that time...). this is a flaw that stops the movie in its tracks. it simply can't continue from this point because of this detail. i've always been most impressed with the harmony and synergy between the writing and filming of these three movies. there are absolutely no obvious inconsistencies. steven spielberg and robert zemeckis should be applauded for their masterpieces. as i said before, i write none of this to disparage the work of these men, only to bring truth to light. as i also said, i have been able to imagine mine way through this great difficulty while watching 'back to the future 2,' but sometimes i still have a hard time with the continuation of the story. obviously stopping the movie at the point of the inconsistency would have made for a pretty cruddy ending. i'm glad they continued, and even went on to make a third movie to round out the story, and bring closure to it once and for all. i believe that we criticize most harshly the things that we love, and that is the vantage point of my writing. i hope that you will all continue to appreciate these movies for their excellence, and maybe even be provoked to watch them a bit more closely. thank you for bearing with me through this. it may have been something a little different than what most of you expect out of me in a thirsty plants entry, but i appreciate your humor. plenty of time for theology later... don't forget, the new record will be in stores on april 13th, so make every effort to spread the news with us. thanks for all your support, and for being our guild. i look forward to meeting many of you on the road this spring.
take care and God bless-
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