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It’s been two weeks since I watched a screening of The Book of Eli, and I’m still not sure if I liked it.

It’s not that it’s that complex of a film, really. It just gave me plenty to think about, and I’m sure some of my own personal religious beliefs may play into my indecision as well (more on that later).

The basic premise is that the hero is a nomad travelling through a post-apocalyptic world trying to reach an unknown destination, and is confronted by bands of violent drifters whom he dispatches with a certain amount of hollywood-style flair. No, it’s not the 30th anniversary of The Road Warrior, but it easily could be.

With it’s sun-bleached and washed out color palette (there are scenes that look nearly black-and-white), the cinematography easily makes a believable backdroP for our hero’s plight. In the opening scene, Eli (Denzel Washington) is ambushed by a group of drifters. He asks them kindly to let him be on his way. They (of course) ignore his request, and he quickly (and graphically) slaughters them all.

As it turns out, Eli is on a holy mission, being directed by a voice he heard, and he is carrying a book which he reads from every night as he listens to music from a (now ancient) 2nd generation iPod run from a cumbersome 12-volt battery. He reads, he fights, he falls asleep to music. A simple man, to be sure.

When he happens upon a small settlement that is run by local bad guy Carnegie (Gary Oldman), his only wish is to slip in and out mostly unnoticed and be on his way. Trouble is, Carnegie has been looking for a very specific book, one that is actually a weapon. You can probably figure out who has the book he’s looking for.

Well, as fate would have it, Eli causes a scene in Carnegie’s bar, the two meet, Carnegie finds out that Eli has what he’s looking for, Eli escapes, he’s followed by the bartender from Carnegie’s place (Mila Kunis), he tells her to go back, she doesn’t, they run from Carnegie together, he catches them. Then it gets a little more interesting.

I’m not going to give away the ending, as pretty much everything that happens from that point on in the movie is what’s left me undecided. There’s a few plot twists, and there’s one that may be so subtle I didn’t recognize it at first. I’ve got to watch it again to be sure, but if it IS the plot twist I suspect, this film is pretty damn good. If it’s not, it’s merely mediocre.

One of the parts I struggle with (without giving too much away) is that the book Eli is carrying is a King James Bible. I don’t take any issue with that per se, but the film bordered on the evangelical a few times, which I didn’t enjoy, even though I understand the reasoning behind it and it’s semi-relevance to the plot.

It’s not a bad film, but it’s certainly not for everyone.

2.5/5

So as I was hurting this last week, watching the wheels fall off my life and not having a clue what to do about it or where to begin, one of my sweet friends reached out to me. We had a few brief exchanges, but never got into what was going on in my world. That didn’t really matter, though. Just knowing that a friend was near was enough in that moment.

Well, last night I got a call. My friend told me that she’d just heard a new song and that it made her think of me and that I should listen to it right then.

I hung up the phone and found the song. I cried as I listened to it, knowing that everything was going to be okay.

Thank you, my friend.

So, you know how sometimes life throws you a curveball? Y’know, something you weren’t expecting, and it takes every bit of life experience you’ve accumulated to take a shot at this unforseen situation and swing for the fences? Well, I guess I was getting pretty good at hitting curveballs, because life decided to throw a beaner and hit me square in the face.

This last few months has been a pretty interesting and challenging time for me. I’ve had struggles in my career, my marriage, and my life in general. Now, I’m not complaining – I lead a good life, and I feel like on the whole, I’ve handled everything that life has offered me pretty well. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy, just that I’ve kept swinging. Well, over the last few months I started to question myself. As a result, I kinda got stuck and started to slip into a routine of lethargy and stagnation. Never a good place for me. I like to be challenged and to grow, even if it’s just a slight challenge and a little growth, which was kinda what I’d been looking for. I mean, when was life going to get easy? It’s supposed to get easy after awhile, right?

Yeah, not so much.

What do I want to DO?

I’m damn near 40 years old, and I’m still trying to figure out what I want to DO, y’know? I’ve had jobs I loved and plenty of career opportunities, but as I approach what should be roughly half-way to retirement (in the traditional sense) I have no idea what I’m going to do to make money over the next 20 years. I’ve only really got three requirements – I have to be good at it (and I’m okay learning to be good at it along the way), I have to be passionate about it and really believe in it, and I have to make a good living doing it. That’s pretty much it.

I’m envious of my sweetheart in this respect. She has a job that she’s amazing at, that she genuinely loves, and that she is able to make a living at. I’m incredibly jealous of that, and I’m so very proud of her for following her heart even at the times when it’s scared the shit out of her.

The other day I had a conversation with one of my Facebook friends who recently got her dream job as a teacher in Vernal, Utah. She absolutely LOVES her job, just bought herself a house that she’s so excited about, makes a decent living for herself, and is altogether happy with her life. I told her I wished I could fiond that. she replied with a single word that has stuck with me.

“Teach”

Now my initial reaction was “WTF would I teach?” And as much as I wanted to blow it off, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that there’s something there in her one-word answer. I don’t know what it means, but I know that it’s my next step. Stay tuned, we’ll see where this one leads…

The balance with my sweetheart
The last year has been an interesting one for Megan and I.  You see, she’s always been my supporter and cheerleader, handling all the little pieces of day-to-day life while I was out working on being fabulous and successful. Last March, we switched roles a bit. She was hired as the Executive Director of The Great Life Foundation, and we both knew this would require a great deal of her time, attention, and energy. She straight-up asked me if I was willing to be the support structure, and I willingly said yes.

As it turns out, I kinda suck at it.

I continue to work on improving, and remembering the little things, but I’m certainly not a pro (yet). The important thing to know is that because I had lost myself in my own world, I hadn’t been taking care of the relationship Megan and I have. Our relationship is very strong and very delicate, all at the same time. You see, we’re very different people, and we require very different things. She is the Yin to my Yang – we balance each other because of our differences,m and they make us stronger, but only when things are working in the relationship. Even a slight imbalance can almost immediately cause the relationship to start tearing itself apart.

That’s where we were, until we took the time to bring things back into balance this weekend. Like I said, it’s a very delicate balance, but it’s a wonderful thing that truly nourishes both our spirits when it’s working. I just need to remember to keep it in balance.

And what’s with the man behind the curtain?
I’ve known all along that by simply deciding who and how I want to be that I naturally start moving in that direction. I realized that over the past year or so, I had started to move in the direction of “grumpy old man”, which I always thought would be funny and entertaining, in a “shit my dad says” kind of way. Turns out that in order to get the occasional nugget of comedy gold, you have to go through a lot of cynical acidic and condescending attitude. After realizing that I didn’t like the path I was on, I’ve made conscious and deliberate steps to be the kind of man that I want to be. The best way to describe this is that I want to be like Tim Gunn – he’s polite, refined, direct, honest, charming and entertaining. That’s the kind of man I want to be.

Life moves on
A few days ago I went to David’s Kitchen with one of my friends. If you’ve never been, you should totally check it out – he’s got the best chinese food in Utah, hands down. I’d been hankering for some of his pot stickers and hot/sour soup. It was delicious as always, and David was typically friendly and gracious as our host. When he presented the bill with two fortune cookies, I gave him $30 and opened my cookie. My fortune read as follows:

“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes”

Simple, and perfect for where I was in my world. Time to start living as a hero.

Oh, and sorry for the baseball analogy at the beginning of this post. I really should let Megan take care of those.

Yeah, you read that right.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going all Vegan-style, gluten-free, dirt-eatin’ fool. No, no! I just figure after damn near 40 years of feeding my body some generally unhealthy stuff, maybe it’s time for a good ol’ spring cleaning. Besides, it looks tasty, right? I mean, just look at that beverage there – lemony goodness with a nice garnish. Looks like you could probably get one in any club or bar.

Don’t bet on it.

It’s basically a mixture of lemon juice, cayenne, and maple syrup in water, and that’s all you live on for 10 days.

I’m just interested in my body being healthy, and changing some of my eating habits and getting the nutrients my body needs, and I figured this’d be a good way to start.

Now, I’m not jumping on the wagon today, or tomorrow, or even next week. I want to know if any of you have done a claense, and what your experience was.

The Japanese have been well ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to bladesmithing for hundreds of years. When Europeans were using sharpened stones and crudely-wrought iron instruments for cutting, the Japanese had already mastered the process of folding steel and working the metal into ridiculously sharp-edged swords for their samurai that were capable of cutting a man in half with one stroke.

Well, with an acute lack of samurai for the last little while, these Japanese bladesmiths have turned their skills to the culinary world, and now produce some of the finest cutlery available to professional chefs. Chroma is one of the most prestigious manufacturers, and their signature line is the Haiku. Now these are no ordinary knives. You can’t put them in a dishwasher, they’re prone to rust easily, they’re expensive and if you’re distracted for even a second while using one, you could lose a finger. Really.

What makes them so great? Well, most knives today (even the really nice, “professional” ones) are stamped from a big sheet of steel before being sharpened, boxed and sold. Not so with Haiku knives. No, no – Haiku knives pass through the hands of several different artisans that have developed their skill level in their chosen craft to god-like perfection. Here’s what goes into the crafting of one of these knives:

Forging
Down a long narrow alley at the back of a house in a dense residential area of Sakei, Japan is a third-generation bladesmith and his brother.

They work with a tiny forge that’s about the size of an average oven to marry two rods of steel – one is a hardened steel that will become the sharp edge of the knife, the other a softer ferrite that will keep the knife from breaking.

The two steel rods are inserted into the 2000 C° forge and heated to white-hot. The steel is then removed from the oven and hammered together until it blends properly.

Once the steel has been blended and flattened, a pattern is taken from the wall and the blade is again heated to around 800 C° and hammered into the shape and dimensions chosen. This is delicate work, and although this has been his life’s work and purpose for the last 40 years, the bladesmith will break one out of every three knives he forges in the process.

Once the knives are forged and shaped, they are sent on to the sharpener a few blocks away.

Sharpening
You’d never know that the small two-story house in the tightly packed neighborhood houses one of the finest artisans in the world today. In fact, to get to the workshop where he practices his craft, you must go through his living room and his kitchen. But the work that goes on in this shop is just as magical and methodical as the forger.

There are several large grinding wheels that the sharpener uses to gently and patiently hone the blades that have been sent to him, delicately grinding away microscopic layers of steel and bringing the edge to a polished edge so fine even a razor is dull by comparison.

As a finishing touch, the sharpener gently and carefully grinds microscopic grooves into the upper part of the blade that will help discourage rust, however, these blades require a great deal of care, and need to be coated with a drop of camelia oil fairly frequently to prevent rusting and maintain their edge and beauty.

The blades are then wrapped in paper and stacked in bundles of 10 arranged by shape to be sent on to the man that finishes the job by putting a handle on the nearly complete knife.

Handle
The final step in the process begins with logs from 100-year-old Whitebark Magnolia trees that are cut into logs and delivered to the handle-maker.

He splits the logs into smaller sections, which are then shaped into long rounded handles using machinery older than this man’s father. A small hole is drilled to insert the shank of the knife.

Stepping outside, the handle-maker now cuts off a short piece of buffalo horn to be used as the bolster, which is a ring between the handle and the blade that ensures a snug fit and lasting firmness once the handle is placed on the knife. Only about an inch of the buffalo horn is used, the rest will be made into combs.

The bolster is boiled in water to make it just slightly maleable, then the handle is tapped into place for a perfect fit.

The finished handles are then carefully sanded again, ensuring a smooth and even surface between the handle and the bolster, such that no crevice or difference is felt between the two.

The shank, or tang, of the knife is then heated red hot and gently tapped into place with a mallet. The handle-fitter needs to listen carefully to hear how far up the handle the tang has gone – too far and the handle will split, not far enough and the blade will eventually loosen and fall off.

Engraving
The final step in the process is engraving the Haiku logo (a falcon) onto the blade. The chef’s name may also be engraved.

Actually, just about anything can be engraved on the blade, as there’s a fair amounbt of room, and all the engraving is done by hand on a small anvil.

These knives retail at around $600 a pop. A quick Google or Amazon search will bring up a list of Chroma Haiku knives for much less. These knives are stamped from stainless steel, and are very good knives, but don’t even begin to compare with the Haiku Pro or Haiku Itamae lines which are both hand forged in Sakai.