What is the Matrix?

I called Microsoft technical support to ask them, but they told me that it was "unsupported software" and there would be a $35 charge for information.

I tried calling Apple and asking them what the Matrix is. They told me to "Think different." I asked "Different from what?" They told me that it was "unsupported software" and that I should bother Microsoft about it.

I tried checking Webster's Dictionary, and it says that the Matrix is "something that constitutes the place or point from which something else originates," or "a formative tissue, as the epithelium from which nails grow."

Why I went through all of this effort, I don't quite know, because I saw The Matrix yesterday, and I know darn well what it is. It's a kick-ass, balls-out, sci-fi, future-gone-wrong extravaganza the likes of which the world hasn't seen since The Truman Show.

Choose the orange Day-Quil tablet for a quick, painless, and enlightening film review, or choose the green death Ny-Quil tablet for the long, stupid version.

Ahhh, you have chosen the Ny-Quil. Bully for you.

There is no turning back now. You will now learn what the Matrix is, but it will make you drowsy, so we strongly recommend that you do not drive a motor vehicle or operate heavy machinery.

The Matrix is better than you expect it is going to be. I expected it to be a "film based on special effect" movie, showcasing the fabulous digital camera array, and its ability to capture a moving 180 degree still frame of a supermodel simultaneously tossing her hair and throwing a glass of water in the air.

It's not. While it does swim with special effects, it does actually have an entertaining plot worthy of its two hour and nine minute running time.

The film starts in the cyberfutre of the far-flung year 1999. By day, Keanu works in the florescent lit, gray-cubicle filled, suits and sideburns office where the multinational syndicate of conformity wages its war against Reebok DMX shoes.

Of course they do this under the guise of a software corporation. Keanu is a brilliant young programmer who can punch out code like he was ringin' a bell. Of course, this should come as no surprise to any of us, because all of the really good programmers that we've ever met have looked pretty much exactly like Keanu Reeves.

Moving on...

Like any programmer worth his "Free Kevin" bumper sticker, Keanu gets chewed out by his boss for showing up to work bright and early at the crack of noon.

The reason that he can't come to work on time is because he stays up all night looking at topless pictures of Ginger Spice on the internet.

Wait, that's the reason that I can't get to work on time. Sorry.

Keanu can't get to work because he stays up all night searching the super advanced cyber-internet of the far-flung year 1999 for the answer to his eternal question.

What is the Matrix?

The ironic thing is that if Keanu had opted not to use Expositionet Explorer (The favorite web browser of all computer literate film characters, Expositionet Explorer will not only flash the word "searching" while it searches, but it will also show newspaper-like excerpts of the web documents that it is looking through on the screen.) and just used a normal web browser, simply typing "whatisthematrix" in the address field would have given him his answer.

In addition to surfing for por... the Matrix all night, Keanu also makes a few bucks by selling mini disks of some sort to people of some sort for some reason. Leon's party music! All right!

Before long, Keanu meets a latex clad vixen named Trinity, and then things start to get strange. The next thing he knows he's getting personal calls from Laurence Fishburne at work.

"Uh, hello?"
"Hello. This is Laurence Fishburne. You have to..."
"Dude! Event Horizon sucked!"
"I know. I'm sorry. Listen Keanu, you have to get out of the building. The Man is coming to get you."
"Whoa! Dude, I see him! He's totally non-non-non-non-non-heinous!"
"Now do exactly what I tell you to. Remember a trash can..."

Yes, you heard Laurence Fishburne correctly. The Matrix gives the most chillingly realistic depiction of The Man that the MPAA has ever allowed on the screen.

In the world that you and I live in, The Man is a force. A deep spiritual evil that cannot be quantified. In the Matrix, The Man is an actual man, and many other men who look like him. When The Man pushes you down in the Matrix, he steps on your throat too.

And Keanu is sick and tired of being pushed around by The Man.

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.

Actually, strike that. I can tell you what the Matrix is, but you're going to have to cross over the warning tape into the "spoiler quarantine zone" to hear it.

If you haven't already, I recommend going to see The Matrix. It is only one gratuitous nude scene away from being a five chainsaw film. If you like The Matrix, you should also check out Bruce Campbell's 1990 megahit Mindwarp, which had a very similar plot, but 900% more gore.

I know what you're thinking right now.

It's the same thing that I've been thinking the whole way through.

Why didn't I take the Day-Quil pill?

Okay weary travelers, the Matrix is an enormous power plant of goo-filled reservoirs, each containing an atrophied human with an Ethernet port in their skulls designed to trick them into believing that they still live in the cyber-culture of the far-flung year 1999 while the heat and bio-electricity from their bodies provide the energy needed to power healthy little artificially intelligent robots that now inhabit our Earth.

Betcha' didn't see that one coming when you plunked down your eight bucks, huh?

The thing that makes The Matrix really interesting is the same thing that made The Truman Show interesting. It's the concept of reality, what it is, and why.

As Christos said, we accept the reality with which we are presented. Until Keanu was unjacked from the Matrix, he actually believed that he lived in the far-flung year 1999. Just like you or I could imagine that WE live in the far-flung year 1999!

Eerie, isn't it?

No.

Because Christos is right.

Think about it. If you suddenly met Laurence Fishburne today, and he told you that the whole world that you know and love is all just a construct of a super intelligent computer that is using your farts to spin its hard drives, and you should eject yourself in order to live in a hopelessly post-apocalyptic world compete with burned up nightmare sky, would you do it?

Hell no!

This is my world! Don't laugh, my car is paid for! This is my beautiful wife!

If I had the choice between continuing to have the lie of my current uneventful life being shoved up a hose into my cerebrum, or a "real" life of eating wood pulp and fighting robotic squids with lasers shooting out of their foreheads, I think I'll opt for the digital daydream, thanks.

And this is why I really really appreciated the fact that Cypher revolted against his "saviors" on the hovership. When he mused with The Man about how he realized that the food that he was eating was simply an electrical impulse fed into his brain, but he was going to enjoy it anyway, he pretty much totally removed any major stigma that I had to this film.

I can buy that there are heroes who are willing to try to destroy the Matrix and rebuild a new human world from the sticks and bones of a dead frozen Earth, as long as there are also selfish dicks that put the whole thing in perspective.

And I really liked how the writers seemed to put about four seconds of thought into each character's name.

"Howdy, I'm Tank and this is my brother Dozer. They call us that because we're rugged, manly men who can appreciate the irony that we are named after machines even though we are techno-clean children of Zion."
"Hello, I'm Mouse, because I'm small, computer savvy, and like cheese.
"Hi, they call me Switch because I'm a lesbian. Get it?"

Someday when I live in the far-flung year 1999, I want to be named after the peripheral that I'm the most like.

"Ahoy-hoy. I'm FM Radio Receiver Card. They call me that because I'm kind of cool to have around, but I'm not worth the money, and odds are I completely screwed up your system when you installed me."

Today's Deep Thought:
If you were Keanu Reeves, you could use a phone booth to exit the Matrix and have a most excellent adventure through history. Take that, Superman.

I probably have more to say about the film, but it's getting awfully late, and those Ginger pics aren't going to look at themselves.

San Dimas High School football rules!