Part of my job entails taking photos of houses.
It’s one of my favorite aspects of my position. I get to be a little artsy, a little creative, but not too much because Lord knows that Real Estate Photography and Artistic Photography have about as much in common as peanut butter and a bag of rocks. This became apparent after my first gig, where I took pictures with ANGLES! and LIGHTING! and SHAPES! and my boss surveyed them with her characteristic grin and politely told me that a weasel with a LiteBrite could have done a better job.
So last Thursday was the third house that I had photographed. It was a rambling one story house with beautiful floors and a broad kitchen, the sort of place that made me wish I had a spare several hundred thousand dollars hidden away in a sock in my closet. I had been there only once before, when I was setting it up for a realtor tour. The occupant was a bright girl who was doing what she could to make the place look nice. She had set up several signs around the premises. Signs that said ‘PLEASE DO NOT LET CAT OUT’.
I looked for said cat.
I found him in the center of a hallway, watching with amusement as the house tenants picked their way around him. He was a sprawling grey tabby with a luxurious coat and those deep jewel-eyes that cats sometimes have.
Oh, I thought. One of those cats.
“Yes, well, he is declawed,”the tenant said, ferrying a vacuum cleaner to a back closet. “If he got out, I just…I just don’t know what would happen.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I told her. “These agents, they are very conscientious. They deal with this sort of thing all the time.”
(NOTE: Not all agents are ‘very conscientious’.)
So I finished preparing for the tour and went back to work.
I didn’t go back until the next day, to take those photographs. By that time I had forgotten about the tabby. I got out of my car, balancing camera equipment around my person, struggled to activate the lockbox that realtors use to get in and out of the houses, and kicked the door open to save my busy arms the effort. Sitting directly in front of the door, his green-jewel eyes cocked in an expression of irritation, was The Cat.
“MRAAAAAOW,” he said imperiously.
“Oh, hi Cat,” I said breathlessly. I set my equipment down as carefully as I could and pushed the door shut with my toe. The Cat surveyed me with interest.
“Fft!” he said suddenly, stalking forward on long, limber legs. “Mrow?”
“Cameras.” I told him. “I’m going to take pictures.” I settled a bulky panoramic lens on our tiny Sony. It looked a little ridiculous.
“Prrt!” The Cat said. He sniffed at the silver carrying-case. “Prrow?”
I gave him a long look. I had been told before, by many jaded agents with haggard faces and flowered shirts, that in Real Estate-ese “I have a pet” means “You have a problem.” That factoid wedged itself into my brain, a nugget of uncertainty.
“Just…try to stay out of the way,” I said, stroking his back. “No cats in these pictures.”
“Prrrrr.”
I set up a shot of the living room, including the bay window and the fireplace. I silently congratulated myself. A good shot. Just as I took the picture, I noticed a slight slithering movement in the edge of the frame.
The Cat lay stretched on the rug.
“CAT,” I said. “Cat, these are house pictures. Move.”
“MRAOW.” The Cat said. “MRAAAOW.”
I strode forward, plucked up the cat, and set him in the kitchen. Returning to my beautifully composed photo, I retook the shot and examined it on the playback.
On the lower right, a smooth grey tail waggled like a banner. I looked down. The Cat stared placidly up at me.
“Mrrrrr,” he purred.
I scooted him behind me with my foot and took the shot quickly, holding him in place with the point of my boot. Once I had the living room secured in my little Sony, I glared down at him.
“Mrow?” he asked.
I plucked him up and stomped to a back bedroom. He purred peacefully in the crook of my arm until I gingerly threw him in and shut the door.
Freakin’ cat.
I proceeded to take photos of the rest of the house.
The photos went rather quickly when I didn’t have The Problem to deal with. I took shot after shot with laser-like precision. Each bedroom became a boudoir. The garage became a workshop. The wood floor was polished and flawless and the kitchen became ‘airy and spacious’. For about five minutes, I was the Dali of real estate photography. My pictures would make a broker fall to their knees, before the glory of a well-lit bathroom, and weep tears of joy for the perfection of their art. I was, quite clearly, some kind of prodigy.
In the middle of a rather painstakingly angled shot of the laundry room, however, I was jolted back to reality.
“MROOW.”
I lowered my camera slowly, waiting. He could sense my movement. Better to wait until he stopped listening for me.
Silence.
Holding my breath, I peered into the viewfinder of the camera, and slowly clicked the button.
CLICK-CLICK.
“MROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”
“AUGH, CAT,” I shouted. “I’m almost done, okay? A few more rooms.”
“MROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”
I tried to stay calm and finish my work, but with each passing second, the yowls grew in intensity and volume. Somebody was going to pass by and think I was knifing a yodeler. Or worse…the girl who owned the cat would come home and hear her baby screaming for release. That would look bad. I began snapping photos recklessly, picking up images of dark corners and shoddy woodwork. The flawless chapel of real estate I had created was crumbling more with each substandard picture I took.
“MROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”
“I KNOW DAMMIT I KNOW.”
Another bathroom: too bright, too small. A closet: taken shut, shoot, shoot. No time to retake.
“MROOOOWOWOWOWWWRRRRM.”
I had almost finished, except…augh. The backyard. I didn’t want to risk The Cat running out there. He’d have to stay in the room for now.
“RAO. RAO. RAO. RAO. RAO.”
He had changed tactics. I bolted through the backdoor and began snapping pictures of the yard. It was broad and had lots of corners for landscaping…I’d need to be sure I showed it…
I clicked away madly, suddenly become aware of a series of muted thumps. That bastard was trying to break out. He was going to break his skull. That girl would come home and her newly mopped wood floors would be splattered with cat skull. I continued photographing, uncomfortably aware of the bashing sounds issuing from the house. Something was going to happen, and I was going to get blamed for it. Hurry hurry hurry.
WHUMP. WHUMP. WHUMP. WHU-
And suddenly the thumping stopped.
It was not a comfortable sort of silence.
The next several events took place in slow motion, as my brain sped beyond the movement of my body. With a sudden jolt of fear, I realized the back door was open. The back door was open, and the thumping had stopped. A low bass tremor of terror stabbed my heart and I turned, the camera dangling on its string around my wrist. I saw The Cat padding through the kitchen, towards the open door, head down, eyes intent, moving closer velvet step by velvet step. I saw the sign, like some sort of prophetic herald, taped to the glass, “PLEASE DO NOT LET CAT OUT”, the ‘please’ underlined with the fervor of a mother’s love. I felt myself take a step, then another, then a lunge, and then a dive. I reached for The Cat, just as he noticed my wild-eyed arrival and began to turn, and instead of finding myself with an armful of fur, I got a faceful of cat butt as I belly-flopped onto the kitchen floor, sliding towards the refrigerator. The startled cat, propelled forward by my momentum, endured this moment in silence.
We slowed to a stop. The Cat shifted, and before he could full recover from the indignity of it all, I stumbled to my feet and shut the back door. He watched this peevishly, and jumped onto the kitchen counter.
“MROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”
Rather than stuff The Cat in a blender, as was my first inclination, I packed up my equipment and left.
Epilogue: The next week, after I had loaded my photos onto the necessary websites and put them on the necessary flyers, my boss called me.
“What are these on the websites?”
“Photos?” I suggested.
“Well,” I heard my boss chewing the thought over. “You’ll have to retake them. I don’t know what you were up to, but they’re pretty unusable.”
Cue sad trumpet.
Wa-waaaaa.
jane drain. or: how i learned to stop worrying and love ben ten.
November 5, 2009 in Life | Tags: analysis, animation, Ben Ten, ben ten: alien force, ben tennyson, cartoons, children's entertainment, children's programming, cultural commentary, feminism, magic, ninja turtles, pokemon, saturday morning cartoons, saturday mornings, spongebob, spongebob squarepants, transformers animated, yugioh | 7 comments
Let’s talk about Ben Ten.
Ben Ten is one of those shows that I have abhorred, from its very inception, with an almost mythological hatred. Everything about it irked me. The ‘kids’ that never really acted like kids. The stupid catch phrases. The constant ‘plucky boy teases uppity girl’ dynamic of the two main characters. The whole thing seemed like a transparent attempt to sell toys.
Even the concept seemed thin. Young boy and prodigal twerp Ben Tennyson encounters a weird bracelet called The Omnitrix. Ben puts it on, as children do when they find smouldering bits of jewelry in glowing craters, and promptly can’t get it off. He soon discovers that if he fiddles with The Omnitrix and then whacks it, he turns into one of ten cool super powered aliens.
Cue the crime fighting.
For some reason, he spends all of his time traveling the country with his grandpa and his brainy yet bratty girl cousin Gwen. Adventures ensue. Young Ben Tennyson frequently saves the day through a churlish remark and an ill advised poop joke while in the form of a pigeon-monkey-swamp monster.
The crowd goes wild.
You can see why I preferred even ‘The Batman’ cartoon to Ben Ten on a slow Saturday Morning.
All of this made life more difficult for me when Ben Ten’s sequel came out, a series set several years in the future called ‘Ben Ten: Alien Force’. Like its predecessor, Ben Ten has an Omnitrix, and there is much crime fighting.
And now I can’t get enough of it.
Aaaaugh, and thus the hair tearing. I have principles, dammit! Just because the characters have aged a few years doesn’t make the concept any thinner, doesn’t make the banal banter any more tolerable. The animation is still wooden, the characters are still flat. Why am I suddenly obsessed with the misadventures of teenage Ben and Gwen, now with the addition of Gwen’s bad boy love interest, Kevin Eleven?
I am not even lying my friends his name is Kevin Eleven.
I think it’s because Ben Ten has finally fallen successfully into its target genre, a subset that I like to call ‘Dream Fiction’. See, there are essentially two classes of children’s programming. There are cartoons that appeal to kids because they can see themselves realistically in the main character’s role. Shows like Teletoon’s ‘6teen’ or ‘Total Drama Island’ or even Spongebob Squarepants, all depict average ‘adolescents ‘ doing believably adolescent things. The other class, the Dream Fiction class, depicts a life that kids wish desperately that they were a part of. This shit is everywhere. Pokemon. Teen Titans. Avatar: the Last Airbender. YuGiOh. Ninja Turtles. All of these shows have protagonists that kids would either like to BE or would like to be friends with.
When Ben Ten was originally put on the air, the titular brat had the wrong balance of average and extraordinary. He was too obnoxious and immature to be someone that his audience looked up to as a hero, but his life was too strange and dangerous for the audience to feel any empathy for his situation. Nobody wanted to be Ben Ten, and nobody had anything in common with him.
However, when the sequel began airing, the character had made fantastic leaps in his heroic believability. He was still flawed, yeah. He was a kid. He often screwed up and there was an aura of immaturity around him, but he had dropped most of the impish quips that made me want to punch his younger self. He was less cocky, more awkward, and still a part of daily adventures that hold his audience’s interest, even while he wonders What Girl To Ask To Prom. The show’s creators finally found the balance they shot for in the beginning, and the show has become wildly popular.
Also, they gave the brainy cousin magic powers. I could write a whole essay on the powers given to girls in cartoons, but suffice it to say that I think all of her glowy purple demon whatsit is awesome enough to defy stuffy cultural criticism, although I want to be clear that if I wanted to I could get all analytical on this show. When talking to Laura about it, she mentioned the dynamics between Ben and his folks, and the numerous ways Gwen’s boobs add to her character development in the sequel to the original. I’d rather keep this brief though, and keep my focus on Ben’s transition from Douchewad Twerp to Passable Human Being.
Ben Ten: Alien Force still isn’t my favorite show on the air. Like I said, even though the basis of the characters has improved a great deal, the dialogue and the animation are both a bit gawky and stiff. However, its shortcomings don’t stop me from turning it on every Saturday Morning and giggling every time Ben turns into HUMONGOSAUR and yells “HUMONGOSAAAAAUR” like a Pokemon from Hell and tramples on some unsuspecting alien envoy from Jupitard or The Endless Void Of Nothingness or whatever. At this point, it is just quality entertainment and I am able to enjoy it without my inner nine year old saying, “Well, come on, even I think this is stupid, and I liked Transformers Animated so that is saying something.”