I just returned to Los Angeles from Chicago yesterday. Where I was exactly, what I was doing there, and why -- I can't say. I can say, however, that it was a wonderful experience, one that I soon won't forget and one that I hope to repeat even sooner.

And like the recent, albeit short, change in my physical location, this post is an update of my words' location on the Internet. I've been writing for FirstShowing.net for about eight months now. Within that time my words have been relegated to the day's latest film news. Providing the masses with their fix. And I enjoy it. Though, within the past week, I wrote two articles that I am particularly proud of. One, an obtiuary and commemoration of the recently late King of Pop, Michael Jackson. The other, an editorial waxing on Christopher Nolan's prospective third, and final, Batman film -- a film that would complete his Batman Trilogy and, in my opinion, complete what could very well be the greatest superhero trilogy to date.

Below, I've included excerpts from both pieces, as well as links to where you can read them in their entirety. I hope you enjoy both, though hopefully both for different reasons.

King of Pop Michael Jackson Dead at 50 from Cardiac Arrest

Michael Jackson ascended from child star to megastar to king. Jackson is the epitome of the modern-day multi-media megastar.

Best known for his illustrious music career where he wailed and moon-walked his way to over 750 million records sold and 13 Grammy Awards, Jackson also had a long-standing film career. From his breakout performance in Sidney Lumet's The Wiz where he played the innocent Scarecrow to his epic music video crossover films Thriller and Bad, the latter directed by Martin Scorsese, as well as the unforgettable Captain EO in 1986. Always full of life, even when his life was full of turmoil, Michael Jackson even had a brief, yet unforgettable, cameo in Men in Black II — poking fun at himself, the very man he so often wished to change.

His life was far from normal, though Jackson never truly had a chance to attain any semblance of normalcy — but it will be his successes outside the norm for which he is remembered: his signatures on the world of music and movies. Michael Jackson was one — neither one in one million, or a billion even — but one, wholly unique and never to be repeated. Nor should he be.

Christopher Nolan's Batman 3 -- It Starts and Ends with Time

Batman Begins is Batman's birth. The Dark Knight is both his rise and fall to a place even darker than he thought possible. Should, as I expect, Batman 3 continue to follow this classic biblical structure, it would be Batman's resurrection, his transcendence. The bread crumbs are there, resting atop Gotham's pavement.

But it is there where my thoughts, my ideas, my suggestions branch away.

It starts and ends with time. Time, rather a time jump, is a two-fold solution when applied to Batman 3. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are not separated by much of it at all. Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham and brings Batman with him in Batman Begins. We see the first effects of Batman on his city. We're hopeful. We're excited. Crime recoils, unsure and afraid. But, like Bruce Wayne, we are naive. Batman's very presence causes Gotham to descend even further into madness. When The Dark Knight begins, we're left to fill in the blanks: Batman has garnered a dedicated following. He's the very symbol he set out to be. He's more of a welcomed celebrity than the caped and cowled, distrusted vigilante. And then we see him fall, with Gotham close behind and the people of Gotham being pulled in tow. The small amount of time between the first two films is of necessity. They are two halves, each a side of the same coin, one polished, one scarred. But Batman 3 needs not follow that same dynamic. Could circumstances have been different, sure, Batman 3 could have easily picked up shortly after Batman speeds into the night. But it never had to. And it shouldn't have to now.

Batman 3 should take place years, if not decades, in the future. Who says resurrection has to be three days? By aging Gotham, it ages the characters (thus avoiding a contemporary recasting of The Joker). By aging Gotham, it raises the stakes. Gotham, the fallen city, having been sunk for years now. A city without any hope. A population without a hero. Batman, still a distrusted wild card. Batman, still torn apart by the loss of Rachel. Of Harvey. Of Alfred - he has to go. But we gain a more mature Batman. One who, in the decades passed, has now seen it all. One who has been continually hated by the very people he protects. One who won't let himself become good in their eyes, become that celebrity. One who truly knows how to use his rage, his torment, rather than the Batman we've seen who only thinks he does.

A longer stretch of time affords the creators a sizable amount of leeway. Sure, while we must lose Alfred, perhaps Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox would then fulfill that role. Not a butler, but a confidant and engineer behind-the-scenes working from The Bat Cave beneath the long-since rebuilt Wayne Manor. Perhaps The Joker was, in fact, captured and contained in Arkham for however long it has been between The Dark Knight and Batman 3, but he has only now finally escaped. The Joker wouldn't need to look the same, in fact he shouldn't. His already warped mind would be even more twisted. And Batman and Bruce Wayne both would finally have to confront the very catalyst of their descent. The singular reason for their own madness over the unseen time between films. Open old wounds that (though fresh for us, the audience) have been long scarred over but never healed underneath.

Time passed is story gained. It is permission to complete a tonally structured trilogy as originally intended — though perhaps not as originally conceived. It's also structure gained. It opens the story to the possibility of a more fractured narrative where we can be filled in through flashbacks about the state of Batman while also providing natural places within the film to include some more classic Batman fare — flashbacks that, while in tone, would further the story, explain the status quo, and also show us some action of his years passed.

Tuesday mornings meant grooming. Preening, tweezing, primping, pulling, tucking. Every Tuesday since she was old enough to care, or, what's more likely, old enough for it to matter. She'd always start with an inventory of sorts. A long gaze into the bathroom mirror. The translucent hair just above her upper lip. The mole just underneath her jawbone on the left side of her neck. Her trimmed and tweezed eyebrows. Her thin eyelashes. Her grey eyes. Her permanently pouted lips and always-flushed cheeks. The small scar that only she could see just above her right temple. Nothing spectacular. The same reflection she'd seen yesterday and the day before that. The same she'd see tomorrow. By all accounts she was pretty. Not to be envied or lusted after, but not to be ashamed of or hidden either. Better than average, but just. She was used to it, to herself.

The scalding water exploded her pores, soaking in the heat, pushing the salt, grit, sleep from her skin. Her face buried in the blue, plush towel, she'd breathe the steam. And she'd return to her reflection. With polished, stainless steel tweezers in hand, she'd comb her eyebrows flat. Then against the grain. And flat again. She'd start from the outside and work her way toward the center. Pluck the rogue hairs just abover her eyelids, the overgrown hairs cresting at the innermost point of her brows. Make bald the space inbetween. Fifteen, twenty, thirty pulls, each leaving behind a small, flushed dot. Most wouldn't notice just how much work she put in, just how much time. But she knew.

Between her index finger and thumb, she claspsed the tweezers's edges around a just-sprouted hair in the very center of her eyebrows. It was dark and a bit thicker than the few she'd plucked around it. With a firm hold, just like all the others before it, she tightened the muscles stretching from her fingers across the top her hand to her forearm and tugged. She felt the hair loosen from the skin holding it in place, the root dislodge and spring free.

But the hair was still there, right where it had been.

She tugged again, and again felt the hair loosen, but still there was no hair between the tweezers's teeth. Again, nothing. Scraping, scratching, with no success. Frustrated, with both hands clamped firmly around the tweezers, the tweezers secured around the hair, she pulled -- and the hair extended. As if growing, right then and there. That milimeter folicle became a two-inch-long hair, a thread sprouting from the very center of her head. Clenched between her fingers, she pulled again, furious and disgusted. Five inches. Ten inches. Hand-over-hand, she continued to pull the hair from her head like a magician pulls an endless-scarf from his sleeve.

Her tear-streaked cheeks reflected the incandescent bulbs above her. Her back against the wall, the tile floor cold on her bare thighs. Her hands raw, her palms sliced by that single hair spooled around her. Coiled like a snake, hundreds of feet long and still attached right at the center of her head. Each new foot wet with blood. With each new foot, a piece of her body unraveled. Her feet and legs unwinding like a ball of yarn. She continued to tug. Her hips, her stomach, her chest unspooling like the thread off a sewing machine. She continued to pull. Her fingers loosened, spread apart, and broke into threads, one thread, that thread. She continued to pluck, using her mouth now. Pulling her very self apart. And with one last pull, one last clench of her jaw, tightening her lips, she unraveled.

A pile of thread. A pile of herself. Plucked apart.

At noon today I finally saw Adventureland. Just me and a twenty-something couple sitting a few rows behind me and three seats to the right. From the film's first shot, its first line, I felt a pang in my gut -- I really wish I hadn't come to see this particular film alone. Like Garden State or Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist were of late (or Amelie, Love Actually, A Very Long Engagement, Life is Beautiful, Jerry Maguire, Ghost, Annie Hall, or Casablanca, to name a few more), Adventureland is very much meant to be seen with someone you love -- or, at least, someone you have some history with, perhaps with the possibility of romance.  But, as I was alone, it provided me ample time to reflect on myself and those who I wish would have been sitting to my left as the film played in front of me.

And Adventureland is very much a film that relies on its audience to impart pieces of themselves onto the screen. The film provides the latticework and scaffolding and foundation, but it's what I brought into the theatre with me that pushed the film further than it could have ever reached on its own. In James I saw myself. In Emily, Nicole. In James's fears and regrets about the future and his past, his romanticism and sensitivity and his love of poetry, art, literature and his confusion about how to turn that love into a life, a career -- it all became mine, it was mine. It is mine. The uneasy, warring balance of idealistic optimism and pragmatic cynicism -- it's a constant in my life still. Not only could I relate to what I was seeing on screen, but I could empathize, feel, really feel everything deep in my heart, recall everything from the recesses of my memory. I was no longer watching actors or characters projected in front of me; instead, I was watching myself, my summer between high school and college, my first spontaneous kiss with Nicole, not underneath a bridge in Pittsburgh, but in a dark theatre in Sarasota as Garden State's closing credits rolled in front of us.

Any film that has the power to become a vehicle for such a personal and cathartic experience is something very, very special. Adventureland is. It simultaneously made me re-experience love lost and the transformative journey of that emotional growth and yearn to fall in love all over again. Adventureland is a beautiful, splendid, sublime film. I love it. No. I'm in love with it.

It's been a while. A very long while. And it'll probably be a while longer.

Well. Maybe not that long, but don't hold your breath -- although if I was accused of involuntary manslaughter it would solve my time management issues.

Fanboys. If you've ever defended anything in the Star Wars universe by saying, "Come on, man. It was a long time ago.  In a galaxy far, far away..." then as soon as you can, see this film.  It has its flaws -- but you, like me, won't care.  And that is why it ultimately succeeds.