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| You know how having one small thing working correctly can just make a lot of related things much easier, and this radiates out like a butterfly effect of sorts? No? Well, here's an example: For instance having a working inverter board allows you to see what is on your laptop screen, which in turn allows you to navigate your cursor on the screen to access various files. Should you do that you could, say, open the document with the completed weblog entry that you intended to publish right now and using that very same laptop (!), publish said entry. Hypothetically, of course. This is a roundabout way of saying that my entry on the new season TV shows will be delayed until I can fool with my now thrice broken laptop. Time heals all wounds (someone smart once said), so hopefully time will fix broken inverter boards and cables as well. And if time won't do it I'll take a less poetic shot at it in a week or so. The summary of the-entry-that-is-forever-delayed is thus: Dirty, Sexy, Money and Pushing Daisies both rock, but in entirely different ways, and are my favorite shows of the new season. Pushing Daisies is the more accessible of the two and has a saccharine, fairy tale quality that works amazingly well. Everything plays towards this end from the dialogue to the color in the backdrops, and the show ends up with an Edward Scissorhands (maybe a little Beetlejuice?) atmosphere to it. But less dark. Dirty Sexy Money is better than either its name or advertising would suggest, but has a largely linear plot so its probably better if you can catch earlier episodes first. Reaper is in rotation and staying above the cut, but I don't see where they're going to go with this. Aliens in America seems alright, but I just can't get into it. It sort fo has a Malcolm in the Middle vibe to it. 30 Rock hasn't been that good this season. If it and Scrubs continue at this pace I might just stop Th night quasi-realtime viewing and just catch Earl and Office on DVR later. Heroes gets a bye (like teams who win the World Cup automatically qualify for the next one) even though it seems below par and completely inaccessible to new viewers. Last season started really moving about midseason, and this was a quality enough show last year for me to give them a shot to improve at the halfway point again. Even though we're four weeks into the season this stuff is relevant if you plan on watching TV for the next month as the Writer's Guild of America strike that started on Nov 1st will probably stop shows from getting much past mid-season (if they make it that far) and a bigger delay before they start up again next year. So expect a lot of reruns and crap reality shows. It should give plenty of opportunities to catch up on shows like the ones above though. I also feel I should plead guilty to now being hooked on The Hills. It happened 3 weeks ago. I was typing on my laptop and had the TV on in the background. And then a Hills marathon started. I felt dumber for having watched it, but I am strangely attracted to the damn show anyway. And I suppose a show that can make Lauren Conrad look like the smart one must be cunning on some level. I mention this because 1) should you need a guilty pleasure, this isn't a bad one, and 2) The Hills, Pushing Daisies, and Dirty Sexy Money are all on different networks but all provide remarkably good video streaming from their respective websites. I was surprised by how much this capability had advanced in the last year and its worth checking out if you have a situation where an internet-enabled laptop is an option and a TV isn't (or if you are DVR-less). So, last thing - South Park this week was based around Guitar Hero. Proof:  I don't think I stick my toungue out like that tho... Yes, Heidi and Spencer are the real problem. I am 7-2 in my first ever fantasy football season. Is it too early to hope for a dynasty? G'night! - Location:home
- Mood:relaxed
 - Music:I Remember You - Skid Row
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| I realize we’re 3 weeks into the new TV season, and I’ve managed to catch most of the series that started up so, obviously, those reviews will be following along. But this is all about the last few months of the silver screen. A bunch of movies that I saw and meant to post about have come and gone. But, happily, some of them are so obsolete that soon they will be out on video, so relevance regained! This set includes a bunch of popcorn movies from the late-summer, all the way through a couple of recent ones that, for me, saved the movie going year from being disappointing. I usually like the spring/summer releases better than the academy-award bait that comes out near the end of the year, but this year looks to be an exception. Oh, before I forget – They’re making a Get Smart movie, which made me very happy. The show was before my time, but I caught all of the reruns when I was a kid on our local access channel. For anyone who remembers (however vaguely) the goings-on of Maxwell Smart and 99 vs. the forces of KAOS, this is fabulous. Hopefully they don’t’ make it tongue-in-cheek (it was already a comedy), or update it (shoe-phones rock). The Bad (skip if you can) Bobby: Not good. Superstar ensemble cast that came to nothing. Also, I don’t know that Elijah Wood can play anything else besides a hobbit. He just always looks like one now. Oh, it has Lindsay Lohan, and she turns in one of the better performances. Overall rating 4.5 Worth the ticket, definitely DVD or Netflix. Ratatouille: You know, I didn’t like it when it started, but it ended up being remarkably satisfying. It was also one of the more complex animated, kid-friendly movie that I’ve come across. There are a lot of characters each with their own themes and motives, and they handle it well. In particular, there were some things that they could have done to make the movie more formulaic (and probably too big to be manageable) that they wisely decided to skip. A couple of good quotes, and the female lead is cool before she becomes the generic female lead. Overall rating 7.8 The Simpsons Movie: OK, seriously, I wasn’t expecting much. Nothing about this seemed like it was a good idea – converting an over-the-hill TV cartoon to a feature length film? A lot of things can go wrong. It was however, pretty good and definitely worth seeing. It was actually better than most of the series has been for the last few years, and it would be interesting if the entire brand is converted to a series of movies. They avoid the problem that Star Trek : TNG had (I’m sure there are more recent examples, but that’s the first one that comes to mind) trying to include everyone in the cast and the result is strong, even if the humor is weighted towards the beginning of the film. And the Spider-Pig clip is still endlessly hilarious to me, no matter how many times I see it. Overall Rating 8.0 Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard: John McClane ain’t an everyman anymore. Now he’s a jaded badass who runs around doing monstrously destructive and silly things with the “I’m a Mac” guy. This isn’t like the other Die Hard movies in basically every way. It is, however, silly fun for its action sequences, which are so outlandish as to be funny and moreso than any other action movie that I’ve ever seen. Afterwards we could tell who had been in the showing with us because they were 1) groups of two or more guys, and 2) all smiling, snickering, or re-enacting scenes with their hands and loud noises. It is what it is, so for that… Overall Rating: 7.0 Bourne Ultimatum: The movie was put together well, but this is one of those situations where I notice the cinematography. And I usually notice the cinematography when it’s bad. In the beginning the movie jumps between locations a lot and later, during action sequences, it flashes around so you feel drawn into the mayhem but can’t really tell what’s going on. There are extra characters, and the movie is a little bloated, but it doesn’t feel like it. Generally, if you like the series this is a good capstone for it – mostly it doesn’t blow it like Spiderman 3 and PotC3 did. Overall Rating: 7.0 Hot Fuzz:: OK, I caught this one on DVD and wasn’t really expecting much. I haven’t seen Shaun of the Dead yet either. But I will, because Hot Fuzz was awesome! Definitely a surprise for its silliness. And I’m pretty sure that it was a parody of some type of movie, but I’m not exactly sure what genre it was getting at. You also have to buy into the movie and enjoy the ride, otherwise it’ll lose you at the turn. And it goes on for a long time – I was thinking it would end for some 30 minutes before it actually did. Overall Rating: 7.5 Worth the ticket, maybe twice, possibly with popcorn and a drink too. Eastern Promises: This was good. Not as good as I had somehow grown to expect from the previews, but good. I will warn you that it is extremely violent or, more to the point, the violence is extremely realistic. It’s kind of predictable, but very well done and, maybe because of Sopranos, it is much easier to accept criminal organizations that you only see maybe 3-4 members of (unlike Godfather, where the organization was expansive). Naomi Watts was a little annoying, following the character line where she’s single-minded and driven…to the point of being a bit stupid. Overall Rating: 8.5 3:10 to Yuma: BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR (so far)!!! I don’t really like westerns – didn’t matter. Someone told me it was a remake – didn’t care. It is interesting, has good characters and good character arcs, is suspenseful when it needs to be, and still ends where it needs to end – and it makes you wish it wouldn’t. It avoids the seriously annoying problem of recent western-esque movies that pad the movie with way too much time panning over shots of the plains/mountains and trying to make the movie epic through use of epic landscape. The scenery in Yuma is desolate a la old Clint Eastwood movies and provides a good backdrop – which is what scenery is supposed to do. Overall Rating: 9.5 - Location:home
- Music:TV on in the background
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| The last few weeks have been inordinately stressful. And this isn’t the transient, simple stress that I’m used to. You know what I mean by transient - the kind of anxiety that comes right before a test, or right before a decision that has an obvious right answer, but you need some time to digest it. No, for the last few weeks it has been decisions that have no right answers, a lot of risk attached, and from which the direction of my life could be inexorably altered. It’s a different scale than what I’m used to. Some perspective is in order. I’m not dying - it’s mostly just career stuff - and I haven’t yet done any of the big, life-altering things like getting married or having kids that seem like they could break someone’s psyche (or cranial artery), so this seems like a big deal to me. Nonetheless, the last month has been strange and filled with much travel and angst. Hopefully that is done now. Sitting here, thinking about this, I also realize that this anxiety is bred from me truly wanting something. These days it seems that I rarely want something a lot…very rarely actually. There is a certain vulnerability that comes with wanting something that is out of my control, and I am not used to this. With one position, there is also very little that I could have done better. Interviews were strong in my opinion, and I received good feedback. Should I not get an offer from this, it would represent the first time that I can recall that my best was not good enough to achieve the desired result. This is unsettling as well. This is being separated into two entries so I can go watch the Heroes season premier, it seems to have a lot of subtitle. And it seems to have a guy in it that may or may not be Doogie Howser. Related to that, while this has been about blah personal stuff, the next will be the entertainment catch up. On one last note…I credit South Park with teaching me this term, but who knew that they were soulless? Look at the FAQ :)- Location:home
- Mood:sleepy
 - Music:none, TV running
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| The shift from college to “real life” is hard. This topic has come up several times recently in conversation, with people around the terminal end of undergraduate, masters, and graduate programs. It is, I think, harder for high-performers simply because you are no longer graded on potential, you are graded on production, and this switch happens overnight. All of a sudden, any life skills that you hadn’t developed (or had relied on your parents and roommate(s) for) are highlighted with stressful consequences. The system which you had spent years mastering and becoming comfortable with evaporates and is handed to younger people. And you are left to deal with yet one more catch-22, no experience = no responsibility = no experience, etc. This is at the forefront of my mind for a few reasons. One is that, as I stated, a number of people have been touching on the borders of this in conversation recently. Another is that I find I am attracted to jobs that I am not expert in, and I seem to be destined to stay in this same hamster wheel of catch-22s that I have been in since college ended. And the third is that I think that the situation of graduating, and how it is one of the few times when expectations are changed so greatly, is a case study that is relevant to many things. One of these is why I seek out and become friends with certain people. Life doesn’t grade on potential, but I do. I am attracted to potential more than to actual success, although one tends to lead to the other. It is a strange thing to consider, with all of the various places that my friends have moved on to. Yet I credit them and remember them for what they were capable of when I knew them best. It is the nature of a system as complex as life that probabilities will add up in such a way send people down unexpected paths. Not every capable, intelligent person will do something earth-shattering. But to know people who could have makes me feel very fortunate. Or perhaps they still can. Potential can be latent for a long while. Can it be spurred to action later in life? Focused to great effect? What would inspire this? Every now and then, through the cynicism of day-to-day life, something is said that betrays a glimmer of need – the need to use the drive that powered us for so very long and has, so often, become dusty with age. I write this entry often referring to my friends in general but, if anything, this exercise was meant to be introspective. I am nothing if not a reflection of those who know me best.
On an unrelated note, in these unsure times, it is heartening to know that our PokeAgents are infiltrating the lairs of our enemies even as we speak. Evidence? Exhibit A, I choose you!:
- Location:home
- Mood:tired
- Music:Lifehouse - First Time
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| Title says it all. Especially for a teen movie. Probably plays better to you if you’re a male and/or liked Clerks, as a lot of the humor initially is dialogue driven (and with similar references) and one of the characters is very similar to Randall. Funny in the beginning so about 2/3 of the way through it feels kind of slow, but definitely worth the money. Michael Cera is yet another Arrested Development alum that I am becoming willing to bank on, and his delivery is as supremely awkward (on purpose) and understated as it was in that show. Rating 8.5 I’m also just really happy that I not only had a movie buddy, but we also walked into a showing on opening day 1 min before the film started and still got great seats. Yay! - Location:home
- Mood:anxious
 - Music:Smashing Pumpkins - Tarantula
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| Part I As expert as I have become at deflecting the trials of unemployment, in recent weeks it has become a cloud over everything that I do. Outwardly it is a subtle change, I think, but my outlook has changed. My thoughts are different. I’ve anesthetized myself by traveling about and partaking in general merriment. That is over, it is time to progress. I am running out of anything else to occupy my mind. We will soon find out if finding gainful, interesting, and rewarding employment is something that I can break to my will. To keep my sanity I am still reading and seeing movies and whatnot, but these pursuits take up less and less time compared to the growing machine that is my job search. Part II That said, this is the first entry I have done that wasn’t spurred simply by wanting to write it. It was caused by my starting to cut into The Sun Also Rises. My local library was kind enough to let me acquire this book, which I had sought out to eliminate the embarrassing fact that I have never read Hemingway. This is mostly embarrassing in an imaginary way. I don’t partake in literary circles and Los Angeles is an unlikely place to converse about such things. Such things as books, or anything before 1970, that is. As there are still 210 pages left to negotiate, the book will most probably continue to tinker with my mind. Already it makes me want to write. It makes me want to write immediately. Not novels. More like weblog entries. Or handwritten thoughts on napkins. This was unexpected. Most books make me want to read or, in the case of bad ones, never to read again. I also thought the book would make me long to visit Paris. It is set in Paris and its heady descriptions of the place seem like they ought to leave one wanting to experience the city firsthand. This is, after all, the writer that keeps that amorphous population of idle-rich bohemian students flocking to France. Mostly though, it makes me long to visit the expatriate district in Hong Kong again. It also makes me crave the curry puff croissants that the Starbucks there serve. In the course of a few short weeks I developed a Pavlovian response to those pastries, and buying a plane ticket to get them and to meet some Australians over a beer seems insanely sane right now. Possibly because of the descriptiveness of the writing, or possibly from some magical charm embedded in the typeface, the book also opens up my senses. Which is to say that I am more aware of the sounds and smells around me as I read it. This is a mixed blessing while camping at the patio of the local Coffee Bean, as the sensory experience seems epiphanic but demands a heightened level of focus to keep reading. One reason for this is that the book is surprisingly dense. Missing a sentence makes the following page fritter apart in your hands until you skim back and reread the cast-off words that started it all. A second reason is that as focused as you may be, inevitably something will penetrate the gauzy sphere that you’ve created. For me, today, this was the yammering of a pair of Asian girls walking by with their too-small dogs trotting alongside. I don’t even remember what they were talking about, only that the pitch, speed, and subject all confirmed that their conversation was mind-bogglingly inane.
The spell was broken. I then looked up and found myself wondering why they and two other women in my field of view were all wearing workout shorts with spandex racerbacks and camis (in various shades of fluorescent) for nothing more than a block or three of walking. I then realized that if I stay here much longer I might end up sounding like the Asian girls. Then I realized that I already may. I decided to try not talking so much. The spell could not be recast. Reading this will be a series of ephemeral experiences, I can tell already. - Location:home
- Mood:pent-up
- Music:Alkaline Trio - My Friend Peter
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| A whirlwind trip to SF and I am more ambivalent than ever. Slow days here in LA too. I need some time to process before I figure out what exactly is going on in my brain, so this entry is all about the basic stuff I know you all love :)
Randomness:
Universal Studios Hollywood: Rebecca was visiting and we went to visit Minal at her theme park “The Entertainment Capital of LA”, and it rocked. Seriously, it was 100x better than the last time I was there – Citywalk has been upgraded tremendously and we spent seven hours in the park (with very few lines) and still didn’t quite see everything. Many of the movie-themed rides are dated, and clearly, liking films will make the special effects shows and the tram-ride much more fun for you, but it would probably be worthwhile anyway even if you weren’t a movie buff. One drawback is that it is very open, so even with the bajillions of water misters (and the Jurrassic Park water ride) it may get pretty bad if it’s hot and sunny, but our hardest experience was trying to decide what to eat since there were so many things to try. Whether it’s worth full price admission is your call, as most of the specials primarily benefit SoCal or LA residents, but it was a great experience overall.
They also have the mule/sled from Serenity in their car collection…and they also have fingerprint identification for the locker rentals (that was unexpected and quite cool).
Speaking of Serenity…: Fanatical fans + nerd power = this You get what you pay for: Hee hee. This artist found a way to shorten the time it takes to make money from art in an extraordinarily novel way ( link). And each one is unique! Inspiration, where hast thou been? : I am always a little annoyed that the best excerpts from political speeches in over 10 years have been from The West Wing, but perhaps no longer. The full text of one of Barack Obama’s books is free online here (page has a link for free .pdf download) and some of the speeches are simply stunning. A disproportionate amount focus on civil rights as, I suppose, can be expected, but whether it is Obama or his speechwriters the speeches are well done and have more than a few quoteable lines. I can’t, however, say I agree with all of his stances, but if he is genuine in what he has said, I think that I would want him as my leader.
“I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”
- October, 2002; four moths before Colin Powell appeared before the UN and five months before invasion of Iraq occurred “Have we failed at times? Absolutely. Will you occasionally fail when you embark on your own American journey? Surely. But the test is not perfection.
The true test of the American ideal is whether we are able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time. Whether we allow ourselves to be shaped by events and history, or whether we act to shape them. “ It’s also worth noting that many speeches are tried out and parts recycled, which becomes increasingly apparent the more time you spend flipping through the (515 page) book.
Tesla has been showing up a lot, hasn’t he? : A story here about a new weapon being developed by the US military, which sounds pretty scary to be on the receiving end of. It then goes on to talk about some other weapons in development, like a huge railgun, which is just so cool it’s wrong. Come to think of it, the way they describe that weapon reminds me of the proton-packs from Ghostbusters. Movies: You Kill Me : with director Q&A! So, it’s all based around one gag, but this dialogue driven black comedy comes out strong. In a city where no-name filmmakers say they need $60 million to make their dream a reality, this movie came in with a total production budget of $4 million. Anchored by Ben Kingsley and Tea Leoni with an extremely strong supporting cast, it is a tribute to what good acting, directing, and writing can pull off for that kind of money. On my indie movie rating scale, this would rate very high, but it is still flawed in the big scheme of things…the main gag is running thin by the end of the film, some plot turns are predictable or, alternatively, not particularly reasonable, but overall, it was extremely well paced and well packaged. Final Rating 7.6 As an addendum, I saw this at a sneak preview at the ArcLight. Firstly, Minal and I arrived a bit late as we were in the bar area, so we missed the intro by Tea Leoni, but on the upside we saw Luke Wilson at the bar. He drinks beer unnaturally fast. Like, a glass in one gulp, no gag reflex fast. It’s also worth mentioning that my review may be tainted by the fact that we were, in fact, at the bar before the movie. The cool part though was a Q&A with the director afterwards. Among other things, he talked about shooting on location. Although the film is set mostly in San Francisco, and then some in Buffalo, most of the shooting was done in Vancouver with the dailies, editing, and post-production done remotely in locations around the US. All of the shooting was done in four weeks, but one of the problems that they ran into was the seasonal change. They expected to be able to film some scenes with greenery, then some with autumn leaves on the trees, and then, by the end of the shoot snow would be on the ground for the remainder of the scenes. Except, apparently in Vancouver it goes from green spring to snowy winter in about two days. So…they spent the special effects budget digitally changing the colors of leaves and adding snow to scenes. I just find this subtle (and effective) use of digital effects so much more interesting than what Pixar does. And virtually all of the special effects and editing was done on macs with easily available software. Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End : Look, I liked PotC2, a lot, and especially more than most people. And this movie sucked. Badly. It sucked for the same reason that Phantom Menace sucked when it was talking about trade federations and senate votes. Seriously, it spends the first 1.5 hours not doing anything interesting or engaging but explaining a fairly complex Pirate hierarchy, and follow this up with poor character development, unclear motivations, and simply too many plotlines and characters. Chow Yun Fat could have been dropped completely. This series would have been better off without an ending than to have this. The only redeeming factor is a few huge action sequences (emphasis on few) and a few quirky, funny moments. Still, clocking in near three hours, it simply isn’t worth it. Final Rating: 4.5 Knocked Up: I was actually going to skip this one, but it handily beat my expectations. Katherine Heigl is solid and, although the main plot is so-so, the humor tacked on is exceptionally funny. Oddly, an ongoing post-viewing poll seems to indicate that it plays well to both guys and gals, with each gender empathizing with the characters of the same gender, and everyone likes the movie. Weird. Seriously, it is still a romantic comedy, but who knew that a good rom-com would originate from the raunchy comedy side? In that it is a romantic comedy, I’m not spoiling anything here by mentioning that, of course, the guy changes his life substantially to be worthy of the female. A tried and true formula (I think I’ve identified 3 or 4 themes that form the core of any chick flick, and this is one of them), but hey, if that and a hottie who happens to be on Grey’s Anatomy is all it takes to make girls want to see a movie that is actually funny I’m all for it. Final Rating: 8.6 Spiderman 3: Ya know, not as bad as everyone said. The action sequences are still thrilling and, although the plot and character arcs don’t resonate as well as in Spiderman 2, its not horrible. Kirsten Dunst can’t sing, one of the villains should have been dropped (most people have said SandMan, I think Venom was least needed), and entire characters exist just to beat us over the head with the overarching theme of Redemption/Forgiveness. Scenes were poorly put together, the best action sequences seem to come early, and the aunt is like a wisdom spouting god-figure in every scene. Spiderman’s neurosis is not as well played or as believable as in the other movies. So, not horrible, but good enough for a popcorn rental. Final rating: 6.8 Oceans 13: More like Ocean’s 11 than 12, nuff said! There is a feeling of inevitability about this one, and the coolness of the characters isn’t quite as totally awesome as in the first one, but maybe that’s because a lot of that came from establishing the characters. Pacino’s part is perhaps underutilized and Minal pointed out that it started slow for her. Anyway, I liked it. I should, again, point out that we had drinks just before the movie, so the review may be a bit slanted. Final Rating: 7.8 Pan’s Labrynth: So, 12th time is a charm. Since this movie was in its theatrical run I had been scheduled to see it 11 times. 11 times someone flaked on me, we didn’t make it to the theatre, someone was sick, someone’s car broke down, etc. I honestly believed that it was a cursed movie for me. However, thanks to Sarah and her unfettered access to Warner Bros. DVDs (and only being sick once, the 11th attempt), we happily broke the curse and drove a stake through its heart a few evenings ago. It was a very pretty movie, but do not be misled when you decide to watch it – it is bloody and menacing. Although it is packaged like a fairy tale, it is more like the old Grimm’s Brothers fairy tales than the watered down American ones we get from Disney. Even Pan is somewhat scary, and his intentions unclear. The movie has very little buildup and jumps right in. The characterizations are ham-handed – the fascist is bad (duh), the lead character was probably conceived of as “young girl, curious, imaginative” and acts that way, but fails to react to some of the situations she is in as a normal person would. This speaks to bad writing, and a lack of character complexity. Anyhow, those were minuses, but the main problem was that the two storylines seem like they should be playing off of each other, or moving in parallel, but I couldn’t make the connections. Perhaps they were unconnected, but they gradually move closer to one another. Eh, whatever. It was a good film (warning, it’s subtitled and 2 hrs long), and, again, very pretty, with a villain that is cunning, smart, and ruthless. No particularly bad acting distracted from the film, although the gore and brutality did, but the subtleties of acting are a little hard to keep track of while reading the subtitles. Final Rating: 7.6 Hm. And Sarah pointed out that people who care for their watches are all evil now. Point in case: Sylar. Who knew? Books: MoneyBall: There’s something about the A’s – I’ve read two “baseball books” ever, and both of them followed the A’s around. Anyway, this was an excellent book. Simply put, it’s describing how the A’s, with a budget far less than its competitors fielded championship teams for a 3-4 yr stretch. How they did it, and the perfect storm of talents and personalities that came together to make it happen make this a remarkably compelling story that is well-written to boot. It is, I might add, a management book cloaked as something else. They did what they did by ignoring tradition and essentially six-sigmaing their recruiting and following the data. The process and the view of how amazing these revelations were to the leagues (and since basically every other industry has been doing this for ages) is – as a generalized case study - a surprising look into what disruptive change looks and feels like to the people who are doing it while it is actually happening. And that is just one of the many reasons this book is worth reading. Unhooked: Girls are becoming sexualized at increasingly younger ages, and this book is about how that trend has created a culture through high school and college that relies on ambiguous relationships that pass off sex as something only marginally more than something you do with your friends, and how this culture makes it difficult to have meaningful relationships. No commitments, which allow a girl to focus on the points of achievement that they are told are important – grades, extra-cirriculars, etc., as well as eliminating the chance of outright rejection and all of the bad feelings that come with it. More to the point, it creates esteem issues and insecurities when they attempt to get into a real relationship, and a lack of practice (that normally comes form the false-starts of dating) makes it hard to make those relationships work and harder to value. There is also a disturbing disconnect between what people (both guys and girls) are saying they want as their long-term relationship goals and the actions that they actually follow. As bad as you think it might be, particularly when you went to school, its probably worse. This book is worth a whole entry with quotes on the psychology of it all – particularly how feminist ideals of empowerment have been co-opted and actually reinforce these behaviors. Peer-pressure, and the whole idea of “well, there’s no reason not to” is pervasive as well. And what I would call bad parenting. If I get time, I’ll do that entry, but no promises. Blink: Malcolm Gladwell, why must your writing style annoy me so? Like so many books of this ilk, the salient points are made in the first third and the remainder of the book is beating you over the head with the same points, only with less relevant examples. However, this book is much more relevant on an individual level than The Tipping Point was and I found it to be a much more interesting study. It is basically looking at how humans use first impressions – how we subconsciously process so much information to arrive at fast conclusions and how this is often felt as instinct, and equally often, how often our subconscious if fooled. It is worthy of reading, if for no other reason that you will be made more aware of your initial reactions on some things and can potentially adjust accordingly. Well, it’s late, so one more quote from the Obama book and I’ll try to finish catching up here soon! “In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it – Social Darwinism, every man and woman for him or herself. It allows us to say to those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford – tough luck. It allows us to say to the women who lose their jobs when they have to care for a sick child – life isn’t fair. It lets us say to the child born into poverty – pull yourself up by your bootstraps… It’s a bracing idea. It’s a tempting idea. And it’s the easiest thing in the world. But there is a problem. It won’t work. It ignores our history. Our economic dominance has depended on individual initiative and belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we’re all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity.” G’night! Oh, and I think this is funny enough to have made it my MySpace pic for awhile. Espescially so if you know much about Bjork...
oh, and try to start it from the beginning. G'night again!
- Location:home
- Music:The Almost - Say This Sooner; Rush - Limelight
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| See, I expected the weblogging to come naturally, as I assumed one bout of unemployment would be similar to the last. Alas, it is not so. Like a snowflake, each time I become unemployed is apparently unique. I’ve been busy I suppose, yet have failed to write here as my time always seems to be sucked away by other things. I look at my dayplanner and I’m not crazy busy, but time passes quickly, apparently. Summertime : ) Perhaps it’s the traveling. I’ve been up to San Francisco twice (and am just returning from my latest trip), San Diego once, and wine tasting in Napa on the first week of no-work. This is not such a bad thing, and it relates to the main point which inspired me to start typing at 1:15 am. My life is generally defined by seismic shifts. Certainly things like high school graduation count, but more recently changes in jobs or moving have been harbingers of more alterations in other aspects of my life at the same time. As one friend put it “it’s like you’re living your life in chapters”, and he is right. I feel I do this naturally because I have always preferred a level of stability, a level of community, and a certain amount of things that come with having been rooted in one place (rootedness?). When one of the major aspects of my life changes, everything else shifts to accommodate the new reality. I try to approach this with a certain decisiveness but it is always an awkward time. I don’t like it and I feel vaguely uncomfortable while in transition, which is to say, pretty much for the last five years of my life. I don’t know what has changed, but I do know that only months after truly settling in with my cadre of friends and hang-outs in my home city, Los Angeles, I kind of want to leave. This came up only recently because, in order to make my job search shorter than last time (crossing-fingers), I had immediately begun applying to other locales in California. After dithering about, landing a couple of interviews elsewhere, and then traveling to and fro, I finally I land an interview in LA. And, as I’m driving back from SF, I realize that I’m disappointed. I realize that I had come to expect that I would have to move and that I had not only accepted it, I sort of want it. At a subtle level this probably affects my ability to operate in LA – how can avoid pulling away from it if at some basic level, I want to go? Why can’t I settle in anymore? Has something changed in my personality? Am I so accustomed to being nomadic that this is an urge that is best repressed, or are my instincts correct? More questions than answers. Always the hallmark of a sappy weblog post. Hm. The backlog of random things to put here is, quite frankly, outlandishly long. So much so that it is intimidating. However, for the record, I will try to put my reviews of the following media up shortly: Movies: You Kill Me – with director Q&A! PotC3 – Urg… Knocked Up – Awesome Books: MoneyBall Unhooked Blink TV: Sopranos – lovely and sublime. The last episodes were better than the series
Veronica Mars is cancelled, and with a cliffhanger season (now series) end! Ack! All other TV sucks and I’m dropping HBO and possibly my DVR Oh! Since I will likely forget this one, I did want to share one of my briefly held addictions from about 2 months ago. Onslaught! I am not proud. Except about the fact that I got to level 251. Yes, the game is infinite. No it was not a waste of time. It wasn't....really.  And one last thing. I find the whole lolcats phenomenon absurd, yet find them increasingly hilarious in their absurdity. Point in case (trust me, it grows on you):  Happycat! G'night. | |
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| History is replete with repetition. Everybody knows the old saw “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it” (or some such). History majors use it constantly to justify their career choices. And yet, when forced to recognize the corollary to this – that the times that we live in, although superficially different, have some very obvious relations to past situations – people (and leaders in particular) close their eyes and start yelling “La-La-La!!!”. Why, during the Republican presidential primaries, was John McCain the only candidate to say that the United States should not condone or use torture? Why was there discord over whether or not American citizens should be able to be held indefinitely, and without trial? These issues were previously settled by very intelligent people, largely before my time. They were built on centuries of experience and held as sacrosanct by generations on both moral and logical grounds. Why are these the issues under debate? I don’t know why leaders believe that the times that they live in are exceptional. Is it is to inflate their own self-importance, to deny that the choices that they make are something more than part of a cycle in the ebb and flow of time? This administration has convinced a large number of citizens that this time is different, that this war (on terror, not the one involving soldiers) is different, and that this requires extraordinary means. By any real measure though, this is simply untrue. While literally every situation is somewhat different, how is the threat from Al-Qaeda worse than that posed by Hitler? How is it worse than having another country point a thousand thermonuclear warheads at us? How is it worse than having our country ripped asunder and having our citizenry consume itself? And yet, in these prior conflicts we did not resort to having our constitution threatened, our basic protected rights permanently diminished. My gut instinct is that these people-who-would-lead have an idealized view of America, one that is based on some combination of old television shows, half-remembered experiences, and a basic recall of 7th grade history (we learned about the Constitution in 8th). Even without an understanding of history, a basic respect for it would be fine. Build on those who came before you. But alas, it looks as though we are going to be forced to relearn why we have the laws we do, the protections that we do, and, possibly, why we have the government that we do. There are very good reasons for both the Geneva conventions and three branches of government. That people aspiring to be President do not acknowledge these – and, quite possibly won’t until proof occurs before their own eyes – is both pitiable and disturbing. I feel that the country is becoming increasingly short-sighted and individualistic, and our leaders only encourage this by failing to stand for anything that could unify us. While every Republican candidate vies to be the political reincarnation of Ronald Reagan (as did the current President when he ran), what Republican existant can reasonably think to sweep 49 of 50 states in a general election as Reagan did in 1984? Do Republicans stand for anything anymore, other than winning to cover their own greed? The party who pilloried a sitting President for oral sex is now set to back a candidate who has not only been married three times, but one of which was to a second cousin and who was also caught in a long-term extra-marital affair (Giuliani). The party’s brief time with all three branches of government under their sway was marked by corruption, lack of oversight, and irresponsible, freewheeling spending. These are exactly the things that Republicans used to run against! The point of the Republican party seems to be thus: They campaign to win, and they win to give favors to their leash-holders. There’s not even a pretense of statesmanship anymore. There is no moral center – although they have co-opted pulpits across the country- and ultimately this will result in the party withering. The lack of inspiring candidates is one indication that this is occurring, although the recent setbacks in Congress counts and, more subtly, a shift in Governorships to Democrats over the last five years is perhaps the strongest indicator. This stands to be the most painful effect in the long term as Governors not only generate significant help on the campaign trail, but are also the main talent pool for producing Presidential candidates. This is annoying to me. It is annoying because I thought that, by now, the flaws in the way the Republicans governed would be obvious, even to themselves and as the well-oiled, MBA-driven machine that they are, the organization would adjust to become more electable. Platforms would change and dark-horse candidates would get some spotlight. This hasn’t happened, and the party is debating between a mayor from New York(a mayor! Seriously, that isn’t enough experience for a national office!), a Mormon from Massachusetts (which should play well with the party base), and McCain – who’s a good guy but doesn’t jive with the people who pay the party bills and has never truly recovered from the attacks Bush/Rove circa 2000 sullied him with in South Carolina. That, in turn, is annoying to me because I didn’t want to vote for the likely Democratic candidates – Hillary or Obama. Why? Because Hillary, although an excellent policy wonk and someone who could conceivably fix our healthcare system, simply has too much baggage and, frankly, I don’t really like her. She seems manipulative and calculating. Everything she has done since Bill Clinton left office has seemed like window dressing for a presidential run. I have no idea what she really stands for or if she stands for anything, and she has had plenty of time to show us what these stances might be. Obama I want to like, but has exactly the opposite problem. He can be inspirational – which I sorely miss from US politics – but his entire career consists of 7 yrs as a state Senator, than one term as a US Senator. Really? Still better than just being a mayor, but not by much. Some more baggage and experience might not hurt this guy. I also worry that, since Hillary is swiping most of the established talent, that Obama would have a difficult time adjusting and leading were he to win. The Democrats have always been short on experienced talent – especially in foreign policy – and eight years out of office can’t have helped this much. It is possible that the mechanics of campaigning and leading (should he win) would be beyond Obama due to a lack of infrastructure. And strike two for both of these guys is that they have both been Senators, not Governors. Governors have leadership and managerial responsibility, have to take stands, push through their own initiatives, and are measured by how well those initiatives work. Senators have none of this. Even basic skills like delegation and judgment in appointing retainers isn’t truly tested as a Senator. And, as much as I hate to say it, I don’t think anything would line up the Republican base behind a sorry sop of a candidate more than having a minority candidate (female or black) running against them. Yes, I realize that females aren’t in a minority, yet as a voting bloc they act as if they are. 2008 is going to suck. Blah.
PS From the folks who brought you Order of the Stick - Erfworld! The site has been added to the link list (on the left) for easy viewing. - Location:home
- Mood:calm
 - Music:The Queen and I - Gym Class Heroes
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| Yes, yes. I know it’s been awhile and I would like to mention two things. 1) I am still alive. Thank you, thank you. No thanks to off-sweeps TV and a slew of mediocre movies. And… 2) Not doing an entry for a couple months means this entry would have been long. Very, very long. So, given that my entries are usually >50% media/entertainment related anyway, I’m separating this entry into two posts – a TV & movie one and an “other” one. I’ll post the non-TV & movie one in a day or two. Til then here’s a good chunk of reading! Happy Easter! TV American Idol: Hm. Time to start paying attention to this since it’s down to a number of names that I can rationally remember. I still don’t get why this show is so popular, maybe the Neilsen system is more screwed up than we thought. Maybe that’s the system being used to measure votes, which is why Sanjaya is still on. One guy at work has fielded the hypothesis that maybe American Idol has already discovered all of the people who can sing and have stage presence that haven’t been found by music labels. I found this preposterous on the basis that there are a lot of talented people in the US, but then was forced to admit that the American Idol field this year sucks rocks and a couple of folks are what I would call quasi-professionals (like a back-up singer) in LA already trying to be professionals. Funny thing, it also happens that all of the Idol contestants are being housed in this same co-worker’s apartment complex. His wife ran into two of them on the elevator and they didn’t say hi back. She wants them voted off now. 30 Rock : I really like this show, it’s contending to be my favorite on the air right now. It probably would have won out too, except Entourage and Heroes are starting up again and The Office had a hilariously strong (half-season? What are we calling these 6-episode streaks, anyway?) opening. Really, I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that 30 Rock pulled off having Pee-Wee Herman as the last (inbred) Habsburg, and then fit in an LL Cool J cameo and a Tupac reference only two weeks later. And, yes, Alec Baldwin is great. Great great. Extras: Such are the difficulties in weblogging so little! I was going to rave about this show by Ricky Gervais (creator and lead in the UK version of The Office), but just two weeks ago he decided to not carry it on for a third season (after only 12 or so episodes)! It’s a BBC/HBO crossbreed, and I highly recommend seeing it – either through Netflix or HBO (they’re running reruns, and should have it on VOD). I can vouch for the second season, but I haven’t caught the first one yet. Stellar, hilariously conceived cameos set this apart (for instance Orlando Bloom, Daniel Radcliffe, and especially David Bowie) but it is quite funny all around. The Sopranos: The final nine episodes are coming up and, after fiddling with my VOD setup late one afternoon (my sleeping schedule is quite screwed up) I happily discovered that the whole last season was on free-VOD and included 3 minute recaps of every other season so I could figure out where I left off. Over the course of a week I finished the long journey that Carolyn and I started 2.5 years ago, and I am now finally caught up on this series. I am reinvigorated, as all of the dullness that would periodically afflict the series seems to have washed away and anything can happen in the end. Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun… The Black Donnellys: This is on the fence for me, and had better take it up a notch or go away. It’s a strange mix of plotlines that are moving (seemingly) quickly, and ones that are percolating in the background, and yet on any given (1-hour!) show, nothing seems to happen. It’s like they’re trying to pace like The Sopranos, but we don’t really care about any of the characters yet. Bad news unless something gets interesting in a hurry. At least Studio 60 was definitively signed for more episodes, so this time slot will likely be going back to them in a couple of weeks. Andy Barker, PI: I’m giving this one a chance. It’s got some potential and I’m sort of an Andy Richter fan (plus it has Buster from Arrested Development). It’s not very good yet, but is worth a few laughs each episode, even if you have to listen closely to get them. Minuses for the fact that they stole Marcy’s bit about cloaca in the last episode. If I find out one of their writers overheard that joke in Doughboys, I will literally go and break their legs. Other Shows: Dirt, The Next Pussycat Doll (or something like that), Identity, America’s Next Top Model – they all suck! I can’t even keep them on as background when they come on after something I was actually watching. Gah! Wait, even more I just thought of: The Amazing Race and The Hills too. So much for the TV renaissance! I’d rather just watch The Soup so in the off chance that another person starts going on about any of this tripe I can say something witty and topical about it before I punch them in the nose. Movies Shooter: Marky Mark is back. After his stint on The Departed it must be nice to be in a movie where…well, most everyone still dies, but in this one he gets to do most of the killing. OK, this plot has been done millions of times before, but I went to see it because it hadn’t been done in awhile and the previews looked sweet. I wasn’t disappointed until 80% of the way through the film. Good action sequences, good pacing – it just keeps moving – and it develops a good cadre of side characters. They could have wrapped up this well-done bubblegum-pop action movie with a nice, formulaic Hollywood ending and I would’ve been happy. I mean, that’s pretty much what I expected anyway. But then everything goes haywire. Then a couple characters just become horrible caricatures, they try to strap on a political message that is poorly conceived and doesn’t really fit with the level the characters are playing on, and then the movie just stops making sense entirely. It’s like the guys making the movie were professional snipers but learned about the US government from watching non-consecutive episodes of ‘24’. Plus some of the things just literally don’t make sense. And, to top it off, Danny Glover has developed a lisp that was just very annoying. Blah! Final Rating: 7.2 The Number 23: <After writing I realize that this review has enough clues to count as a spoiler, you’ve been warned> This movie almost pulled it off, but fell short in the end. They just don’t sell the whole mysterious number 23 thing which, as you’ve probably guessed by the title is quite key to the story. You’d think that plotlines like this had been trod over enough to make it obvious that you need to start small and build up to the more unbelievable stuff – Fight Club, Seven, The Ring, Lucky Number Slevin, Beautiful Mind, all ramp up successfully and pull you into the conspiracy (as it were) allowing you to suspend your disbelief when they do some less-than logical/realistic things at the end. Jim Carrey did a good job acting and the concept was there, but I would put this on Netflix at best, or maybe catch it on free VOD. Final Rating: 6.0 300: You know how if you flip through a series of pictures really fast it looks like a movie? Now do that with a graphic novel and – Ta Da! You have 300. Look, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, but I thought it was going to be crap. I saw it because a girl with a pretty good meter for these things wanted to see it - and who am I to argue if I’m lucky enough to come across a female who thinks seeing this was a good idea. She was markedly disappointed. The film is what it is advertised to be, nothing more. It starts with the title scrawled in blood across the screen and ends with the credits rolling over silhouettes of soldiers hacking each other apart – the movie in between connects these scenes in predictable fashion. Every line of dialogue is a speech – even lines that shouldn’t be: “Spartans! Prepare a hearty breakfast!”, and there is plenty of eye-candy for the females in the audience. When all is said and done, I respect the movie for the focus and purity of what it did, but that doesn’t make what it did particularly good. The graphic display was stunning and kept me from feeling bored after 2 hours of Spartans killing things over and over and over and over and over, so it was admittedly well-executed. In the end though, there just wasn’t any substance. A caveat: people under 25 seem to uniformly rave about this movie. Maybe the OC/Nip-Tuck generation has made its way into the movie biz. PS If, up above, you thought “Man, he should have put a couple more ‘and overs’ in that sentence and it would have been perfect” then you, my friend, will love 300!
Final Rating: 7.5
Babel: Babble…babble babble. I got the point of this movie, I think. I thought it was three stories that revolved around how outsiders – literally foreigners in two of the stories - dealt with (and are dealt with by) societal constructs to which they can’t fit in because of who they are. Not necessarily their personalities, but tangible differences that keep them apart, be it language, race, etc. While putting a movie like this together gets a studio some Oscar nominations, it also makes for a ponderous beast of political correctness that clocks in at probably 30 minutes longer than it ought to have been. Seriously, one whole story seemed tacked on simply to make a point about US immigration. Liberal and by a Mexican director – how shocking! It was the worst of the three stories, but I’m sure it boosted someone’s street cred much in the way a token song about the IRA always gave a touch of authenticity to Irish bands. Final Rating: 7.6 Stranger Than Fiction: Lovely, and sweet, and well-executed. This movie was reasonably good throughout but it wasn’t til near the end that it got me, hook, line, and sinker. Maggie Gyllenhall finally does something decent – the only thing I remember her from was Secretary, and hooking up Kirsten Dunst with her brother – and it turns out that she can be like Katie Holmes with a personality…and acting ability. And she fricking made me stop in the middle of the movie and go make a batch of cookies. Emma Thompson is also absolutely wonderful as a constantly pained author. Watch the DVD extras – it includes an interview sequence where her facial expressions are so simply perfect that those alone make her a better actress than most people in Hollywood. Once it's over, you must ask yourself if it was a comedy :) Final Rating: 8.7 - Tags:
entertainment
- Location:Fresno
- Mood:chipper
 - Music:none - although I should be posting some stuff on my Myspace page soon
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