Adventures in Onionism

I just watched The Call of the Wild , a documentary about Chris McCandless, AKA Alexander Supertramp. I also re-watched Into the Wild for comparison. The latter I assume you've all seen and don't need to hear anything about; I liked it just as much the third time as the first. Pretty much the only thing I don't like is the font of the opening titles. Thanks for not blowing it, Spicoli. The Call of the Wild on the other hand is a low-budget independent documentary by film-maker Ron Lamothe who re-traced McCandless' steps. Lamothe was born in 1968, the same year as McCandless, and was obsessed with the story even before Krakauer made it huge. For the movie he went to Emory during graduation, Lake Mead, Slab City, hitch-hiked to Carthage, South Dakota, drove up to Alaska, and hiked to the Magic Bus, getting swept downstream by the Teklanika River and temporarily ruining his camera. There's a fair amount of thoughtful introspection--he interviewed random Emory grads, ...

I just watched 180° South . Basically, some dudes take a trip to Patagonia, surf, climb mountains, and talk about conservation, and the meaning of life with Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins (the founders of Patagonia and North Face, respectively). It's sort of a re-creation of a trip Chouinard and Tompkins took in 1968 in which they drove south from California to climb Fitz Roy, then made a movie about it called Mountain of Storms (which now I guess I'll have to track down and see). 180° South was good, but I wouldn't say amazing. The surfing and climbing shots are of course beautiful. The soundtrack is very good, but a little too heavy on the Jack Johnson for my tastes. The discussion of dropping out/the meaning of life is fairly simplistic when it's from the point of view of the main narrator, but I think that Chouinard and Tompkins, given their impressive experience as both businessmen, dirtbags, and philanthropic conservationists, had more interesting and nuanced ...

I finished reading Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty . For those who don't know, Everett Ruess was the Christopher McCandless of the Depression era. I'm guessing that definition doesn't help many people; if you know one you know the other. Ruess was a young aspiring artist that became somewhat of a legend after disappearing mysteriously in the canyons of Southern Utah outside the town of Escalante in late 1934, leaving behind his donkeys, a pair of "NEMO 1934" inscriptions, and no sign of his belongings. Krakauer mentions him in Into the Wild and Stegner mentions him in Mormon Country . Vagabond is a collection of Everett's letters home to his family and friends from the years preceding his disappearance. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that this book will only be enjoyed by a subset of those already infected with the wanderlust virus. Everett's letters are left to stand on their own for the most part, without much explanation or analysis. ...

I just finished the documentary film Surfwise , and I must say, it's probably a good thing I don't surf, because it's hard enough to fight the urge to drop out of society when I do one sport that encourages me to do so; two might be impossible. Also, I learned that if you're going to raise your kids like a pack of wolves/gorillas/hippies, some of your kids will resent you if you don't at least educate them. The film is about the Paskowitz family, the father of which, Dorian Paskowitz, is a Stanford educated doctor who for a while led a successful normal life, becoming the president of the Hawaiian chapter of the AMA and almost running for governor. But he hit a rough patch and eventually decided to drop out. (Amusingly, after first dropping out, Dorian moved to Israel, came to believe that his first two marriages had failed because he was a lousy lover, decided to sleep with 100 women and rank them on performance, but stopped when he found Juliette, who he thought...