[Guest Writer]
I waddled into the Anchor Pub [defunct link] and there was Aubrey with a beer. He asked what I was drinking and I said “One of those” and pointed at his beer and soon had one because he brought me one and I was very tired and very merry and surrounded by excellent comrades.
I had my first conversation with Michael Rae [defunct link]. We talked about Christopher Sykes’ [defunct link] recently-widely-net-viewed documentary Do you want to live forever?, which focuses on Aubrey. Michael had said in a Methuselah Foundation forum post [defunct link] that he intensely dislikes it. I wanted to know why.
I thought its excellent production values and on-balance pro-Aubreyness overcame its cartoonishness, contrived melodrama, shallowness, and emphasis on sex and sentiment. Combining heads with Michael I’m not sure whether or not its existence is a net favor.
I think what Joe Layboy takes away from the film is “there’s this weirdo genius dude who thinks he can make us live forever and what’s next on the telly?” Vastly preferable would be to make Joe Layboy incredibly mad that we’re all going to die and only 1 in 1,234,567 people are doing anything about it.
Our best minds haven’t yet succeeded in inciting riots. The first great documentarian of our movement might figure out how. Perhaps Christopher Sykes has lubricated the path a little, but pro-cures [defunct link] bloggers and writers have squeezed out a lot more lubricant collectively. They just haven’t made documentaries with non-crap production values yet.
Next post: more hanging out at the Anchor Pub, the day before the conference.