This documentary in one tweet

Science & a lot of happy folks prove that happiness comes from every cliche you ever heard about happiness. #friendships #service #gratitude

Favorite quote

"We pick the people up from garbage dumps and railways station platforms, and admit them into home, and then, with basic medical care, we try to save their lives. But the most important is to show them that they are loved by God; they are not forgotten, that their life is precious, that someone cares... For me, my life is like a loan given from God, and I will give this loan back, but with interest." - Andy Wimmer, volunteer at Mother Theresa Home for the Dying and former banker.

Review

I've titled this series "Netflix documentaries you've been meaning to watch" because when we first got Netflix, I would often scroll through the list of documentaries and say things like, "Oh that looks cool," and "Hmm, I bet this would be interesting," and "Seriously, there's a whole documentary devoted to sushi?" But in the end I always ended up watching another rerun of Parks and Rec or Battlestar Galactica instead, playing Temple Run 2 on my wife's iPhone.

So part of the reason I write these reviews is to force myself to watch the documentaries, and to force myself to think about them. The other reason, of course, is to provide a public service to the Internet that hundreds of other websites are already providing much better. The only reason you'd come here to read a review is if you are my wife, my mother, or one of my third through sixth biggest fans. (By the way, the position of seventh biggest fan is available; send me a Facebook message to apply)

So here's my review: This documentary is awesome. You should watch it.

It's awesome for two reasons. One, it explores the lives of a bunch of happy people, from Ronaldo Fadul, a Brazilian surfer who lives on a shack on the beach, to Ushi Okishima, a 106-year-old woman living in Okinawa, who still drinks sake every night before bed. Just seeing all these people smile and enjoy life makes you enjoy life more, too. There's a lot of cynicism in our world, especially since much of our world is now lived on the Internet, and Happy cuts through all that negativity like a clean summer breeze.

The second reason it's awesome is that it gives a pretty good overview of positive psychology, a relatively new branch of science that basically studies happiness. You're never going to guess what they've discovered makes people happy:

• Strong relationships
• Variety
• Service and love of others

Oh wait, forgive me. You totally could have guessed that. That's what people have been telling you from childhood. You know what doesn't make you happy? Wealth, social standing, power. Oh you knew that already, too? Well now we've got proof of it, or what constitutes proof in the world of psychology.

The coolest thing about this science is the way it demonstrates how much control we have over our own happiness. About 50% of our happiness "baseline" is genetic, that is, all other things being equal, my happiness will differ from yours based on genetic factors. About 10% of our happiness comes from our circumstances, how much money we have, what successes or failures we've had in our lives, etc. It's the other 40% that's within our control, that depends on our conscious choices to help others, make and nurture relationships, and think positively about our lives.

What this movie does more than anything is inspire you to take control of that 40%, and bring more happy into the world. Because - here's another shocker - the happier you are, the happier everyone else is too.

Rating

10 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

Watch this documentary. Just do it. If you don't have Netflix, come over to my house, and we'll watch it together. It will cheer you up. And then, the next time you're feeling down, fast forward to the part with all the little Japanese kids running. The sight of small children running is one of God's greatest blessings.

Jordan Jeffers is always the happiest when he is somewhere beautiful, reading a good book next to his wife. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.

Dear Mother,

I've been watching a lot of Game of Thrones recently, since Dad lent me his copies of the first two seasons. Normally, it would probably take me two or three years to get around to watching them. I still haven't finished Lonesome Dove, and y'all gave me that movie three or four years ago. But high fantasy is kinda my thing, and I liked Double-R Martin's books, so I've been moving through the show quicker than normal.

It's pretty entertaining. It's also pretty gruesome. The amount of violence is horrific, especially sexual violence. There are basically two kinds of characters on that show: cruel, disgusting, violent characters that take pleasure in tormenting people; and honorable, trustworthy, violent characters who don't take pleasure in tormenting people. It's hard to find a character that's worth rooting for, though there are plenty to root against. And, truth be told, I'm starting to feel like I did when I tried watching The Wire: like maybe this show isn't good for me.

Because I finish an episode, and I just feel like I've been kicked in the balls a few times, and spit on for good measure. I read an article a few weeks ago about the use of rape in adventure stories (The Rape of James Bond by Sophia McDougall, published by The New Statesman), and the author said she had to stop reading Martin's books because she got to a point where "I found I couldn't cope with rape as wallpaper."

It's a freaking great insight. It's also completely blind in its own way because sexual violence is just one form of violence. Maybe rape as wallpaper is relatively new, but murder, war, cruelty, and torture as wallpaper is as old as Shakespeare.

I'm not saying stories shouldn't have violence. God in heaven knows that there is violence in what I write. But sometimes violence can become so pervasive and constant in a story that it sort of fades into the background, and we forget about it. Think about any Rambo movie, for example, and you'll get what I'm saying.

This is part of the reason I like Quentin Tarantino movies. Because even though they all have a lot of violence, the violence is nearly always taken seriously, by which I mean, he draws your attention to it. He doesn't let you dismiss it, doesn't let it fade into the background.

Take Pulp Fiction, for instance. There's that scene where Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin in the face, killing him in a rather (ahem) explosive way. Everybody's reactions to this horrible thing are... nonchalant? Matter-of-fact? I'm trying to come up with a good adjective, but it's basically a weird combination of mild regret and mild panic. They don't seem to value Marvin's life at all, but they are concerned about the consequences of driving around L.A. with a dead body in the back seat.

Now, think about all the action movies you've seen where somebody gets killed and then essentially fades into the background. Their body crumples to the ground and then the camera cuts to our hero committing the next murder. If Tarantino wanted to do this, he could. He could blow Marvin's head off, let us all laugh at how surprising it is, and then move on.

But he doesn't. He refuses to let Marvin's deadness fade into the background. Instead, we're forced to spend the next thirty minutes or so dealing with his body, cleaning the blood and little bits of brain and skull out of the upholstery. Again, the characters deal with this as if it's little more than a pain in the ass, which is what makes the scene rather comic. But the movie is still essentially arguing that death has consequences, that the murder of a human is not something that can be shrugged off so easily. The extent to which Tarantino manages to make this point is usually the extent to which I like his movies, which is why I didn't particularly enjoy Kill Bill. Watching The Bride cut through the Crazy 88's draws attention to violence in a different way because it's so obviously absurd that it sort of forces you to think about what you're watching. But this is far less effective, I think, than figuring out what to do with Marvin's shattered head.

Even writing about this kind of stuff makes me feel sort of gross, which is different for me. When I was in high school violence hardly bothered me at all. It's only as I've gotten older (and gotten married to someone who physically can't handle violent movies) that I've become "resensitized" to all the evil present in our movies and books. And again, it's not that I want to remove all of this evil from our stories. It's present in the world, and we need to talk about it and fight it.

But I don't want it to fade into the background, to be taken as a matter of course. And I don't want to drag people through the muck in the name of "realism" or "grittiness" or even "great literature." I want the violence in my books to have consequences. And I want you to be able to read them without feeling sick afterwards.

Ugh, I'm going to look at pictures of puppies on the Internet now. Because puppies are cute. And puppies make me feel better.

With love always,

Your son Jordan

Jordan Jeffers writes letters to his mother on the Internet because stamps are a form of witchcraft. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.

Book review in one tweet

Last man on Earth fights monsters. Becomes monster. Makes long, boring explanations about monsters. #NotTheWillSmithMovie

Favorite quote

He had such a terrible yearning to love something again, and the dog was such a beautifully ugly dog.

Review

My copy of I Am Legend has a giant red sticker on it that tells me the book is "NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING WILL SMITH." It should probably say something like "NOW LENDING ITS NAME TO A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING WILL SMITH."

Actually, it should probably say something not in all-caps. My point is, these two stories are very different, and whatever your experience of the movie, you'll probably have a totally different experience reading the book.

The basic premise is the same; most of the people in the world have either been killed by a deadly infection or transformed into some form of bloodsucking humanity. One guy, Robert Neville, is left alone, trying not to get eaten and carrying the torch for non-bloodsucking humanity. In the movie, the bloodsuckers are called "Darkseekers," which is basically just a way for the movie to have scary half-humans that are kind of like vampires and kind of like zombies and definitely avoid the long mythology behind both of those creepy creatures that might complicate our experience of watching Will Smith hunt deer.

The bloodsuckers in Matheson's book are straight up vampires - garlic-hating, mirror-hating, religious-symbol-hating vampires. Matheson doesn't shy away from the mythology at all. In fact, he spends most of the book trying to find scientific explanations for the mythology. Vampirism is caused by a facultative saprophyte (a bacteria basically), garlic is an allergen causing anaphylaxis, fear of crosses is "psychological."

Essentially the book tries to make everything deep and interesting about vampires as boring and technical as possible. I found myself losing interest, wanting to hear more about Robert's former family or the dog than his experiments with vampire bloodletting in an artificial vacuum. Horror and fantasy are supposed to places where we explore what we don't understand about our lives. They use a deep (caution: English-major word approaching) symbology to explore our non-rational side. All that power is lost the moment you start talking about facultative saprophytes.

Nerd rating

4 wizard staffs (out of 10)

The most intriguing part of this book is the way it plays with ideas of monstrosity and normalcy. Basically it asks whether "monster" is a relative term. If everyone in the world is a monster, does that make the monsters "normal" and the "normal" hero a monster? It's an interesting question, but not something I couldn't get from multiple Twilight Zone episodes.

Non-nerd rating

4 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

The book is better than the movie, but neither of them are that great. And the book doesn't have Will Smith hunting deer.

Jordan Jeffers always wants a beer after writing these reviews. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. Peace.

This documentary in one tweet

Some famous comedians and some people you've never heard of talk about beards, mustaches, and body hair. #ZachGalifianakisBeardRulesThemAll

Favorite quotes

"My dad always smelled like garlic and diesel fuel. And it really smelled...really beautiful to me. His hands would just smell like that because of his job. He sold...diesel-covered garlic." - Zach Galifianakis, comedian and bearded man.

"You know who had a great beard? George Bernard Shaw." - Paul Rudd, comedian and beard enthusiast.

Review

Mansome is the product of comedians Jason Bateman, Will Arnet, and documentarian Morgan Spurlock, who's pretty much the only documentarian that people have ever heard of besides Michael Moore. (Spurlock's the guy who did Supersize Me). OK, some people have heard of Ken Burns, too, but that's it.

The documentary is essentially an hour and a half of random people discussing male grooming habits: comedians and rock stars and barbers and professors and magazine editors and beard competitors and some guy who invented a product called "Fresh Balls." (I'll give you 423 guesses about what that product does, and the first 422 don't count).

The film is split into five parts, each named after an area of male grooming: Mustaches, Beards, The Body, The Head, and The Face, and each of these sections follows a particular person whose life is supposed to give us some insight into this particular area of male grooming. In "The Body" section, for example, we follow professional wrestler Shawn Daivari, who has to shave his entire body just about every day in order to maintain his macho wrestling persona.

Here's the part where you're supposed to think a little. Why is it that a completely shaved man is considered more macho than, say, a guy who looks like a black-haired Chia pet (which is what Daivari would look like if he didn't shave)? Good question Mansome.

And that's the only thing we ever get, is the question. Spurlock is mostly smart enough to let the funniness and weirdness of his subjects carry the movie, giving the comedians plenty of air time, even when the stuff they say doesn't necessarily correspond with the topic at hand. It moves fast and stays pretty entertaining throughout.

But unlike Supersize Me, this is a documentary that manages to have essentially no point of view. We get a few throwaway lines at the end about "evolution" and "mating" and "the triumph of biology," basically arguing that men groom themselves solely to make it easier to have sex. I'm sure this is true in some sense, but it's also ridiculously reductive and insulting. It stops short of ruining the movie because it really is just tacked on at the end, and you don't get the sense that Spurlock really believes it. Actually, you don't get the sense that Spurlock cares at all. It seems like he just wanted to do a movie about mustaches with some fun people, and that's what he did.

Rating

5 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

The best documentaries change something about you when you watch them (so do the best movies and books and paintings, incidentally, but that's a post for another time). This is not one of the best documentaries.

Jordan Jeffers favorite beard is this one from Civil War general Ambrose Burnside. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.