When Will It Ever End?
Saw the documentary Inside Job about the causes behind the economic collapse we find ourselves in the midst of.
This is what the documentary form is for. It lays out, clearly, what Wall Street and its enablers did to, well, fuck the global economy. It names names, is non-partisan, goes to the trouble of finding the news footage of the official hearings, and nails a few bastards to the wall on camera.
This is one of those documentaries that if I were a teacher in a high school, I'd show it to all of my classes. Twice. Once at the start of the year and once at the end. To say this is a "must-see" would be nothing but an understatement.
If something like this played out in a small town, the perpetrators would have that clammy moment of terror when the squeak of brakes is heard out front of the house, the view out the front window is several men with grim expressions climbing out of the back of a pickup bristling with guns, glancing up and down the street to see who might be watching, while two of them walk to the front door. Things are not going to go well for the person in the house.
The evil done by the men and women as outlined in Inside Job is the scandal of our age. The kicker is NONE of them has been brought to justice, and given the fact that they made sure no regulations existed around what they did with derivatives and then with executive bonuses, there may be no way to do anything about it in America. Europe has already moved to regulate this shit out of existence, which may be American's only hope, since about the only thing that can be done here is to hope those in power would shun them, but that's not what's happened.
Maybe enough outrage will come from those who've seen Inside Job, or read any of the books that outline the egregious evil visited upon the world, and our legislators will do something about it. Maybe it'll take the European courts and justice system to bring these people to justice.
It sickens me to even have to write that as an American.
What sickens me more, though, is we are in the middle of yet another fuck-over by Wall Street, and seemingly nothing's being done about that, either. The current price of gas prices is due to bullshit "speculation" by Wall Street, which directly parallels what Enron did back in the day that caused rolling brownouts on the West Coast. Why do we allow this immoral, evil shit to occur? Again, if America were a small town, Wall Street would suddenly show up dead on mainstreet, and everyone would be good with that. (Btw, I'm not advocating or suggesting vigilantism; my point is the sheer wrongness would not go unaddressed were it to happen on a smaller scale.)
According to this article, we have regulations that could be invoked to stop this. Right now. So why isn't it happening? (Yes, that's a rhetorical question.) Here and here are a couple more articles of interest.
My only quibble with the flick is they regularly display information as a block of text rather than have the narrator, Matt Damon, read it. It's in teeny tiny text, as well, which would be readable in a theatre, but even on a good-sized set, it is difficult to read.
(Re the title: I quote the line in the spirit of the lyric from the Monty Python song, "Here Comes Another One," resigned acknowledgement of the silliness and seriousness of the matter at hand.)
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Catfish, plus other movies and ephemera
Note: Absolutely no spoilers in this post.
If this is the first thing you're reading about the documentary Catfish, make sure you read nothing else. See it cold. Do not have anything spoiled for you if you've manage to avoid any thus far. I didn't link to any other info about it for that reason. If you hunt for Catfish the documentary, chances are you'll get it. Here's what the box looks like:
The only thing I'll reveal - that is still not a spoiler - is it resonated with recent ruminations of mine around internet identity, particularly anonymity. Which appears to be a topic that's on other's minds as well: here and here.
This is one of the most touching, human documentaries I've seen in a while.
Oh, and speaking of documentaries, if you get a chance, make sure you catch How to Die in Oregon. Though, if you've lost someone to cancer recently, you may want to wait.
In other movie news, The Opinionated Homeschooler (she's back! yay!) asked why I didn't see Thor. After seeing The Green Lantern, I've re-discovered something I realized back when I read actual comic books: you like the ones you like and the rest are just lame. Or, the premise of the super hero clicks with you or not.
I didn't read many of the main superheroes as a kid because I found most of them silly, particularly Batman. A guy in a suit? With his little teenage orphan adoptee in another goofier suit? Hey, I'm here for the super powers. I read Superman, though I tired of all the alternate universes and stories that spanned two years worth of comic books, with an "Ed. note: See issue #425." every other panel to help you keep track of the story, a near impossibility. Spiderman was fun because the stories were usually self-contained and he was a smart-ass; and don't get me started about Mary Jane who probably launched her fair share of pre-pubescent boners. X-Men was and is laughable because all of their mutant powers are deus ex machina on crack. Need to walk through walls and freeze balls? We've got that mutant right here!
My favorites were: E-man (his girlfriend was a stripper!) along with Rog-2000 - a recurring co-feature, Fantastic Four (a babe, two smart-asses and a nice dad, what's not to like?), the She-Hulk (it was so soft-core, given the issues with ripping out of clothes), the Man-Thing (like Swamp Thing but uglier, scarier, and more existential - like Hamlet without the ability to soliloquy) , and the Harvey comics characters.
My brother and I benefited from the unique circumstance that my grandmother was best friends with another elderly lady who loved comic books, and she ordered so many the local drug store that stocked comics let her tack on the ones she wanted to their order, and she loved the Harvey characters. Casper was kinda interesting at times, and Hot Stuff the Little Devil was surreal, especially when some adults adopted his visage as the representation of a badass.
So, to circle around to The Opinionated Homeschooler's question, Thor never struck me, har har. I didn't like comics that had no levity whatsoever. The couple times I thumbed through a copy, it looked grim, dull, and (though I wouldn't have been able to articulate it at the time) somewhat homoerotic. Though having read "Little Dot" and "Wendy the Good Little Witch" I probably wouldn't have much of a defense of the machismo level of my reading at the time.
Iron Man? Another guy in a suit. Meh.
Now, I enjoyed the Green Lantern movie that's fresh out; his abilities have a similarity to E-man, my all-time fave. And I've loved the Iron Man and Batman movies. I even enjoyed the X-Men flicks, thought still rolled my eyes at the convenience of having a mutant who does just what's needed right when it's needed. I will see Thor when it's out on DVD, prolly.
None of those worked for me on the page, though.
I find myself synchronicitly in the midst of a Ryan Reynolds movie festival (he being the star of The Green Lantern).
I picked up The Nines simply because I've like most of his work so far, save for what was supposed to have been his vehicle to stardom, Van Wilder. His character in Blade III essentially is the movie. (In one of the most inexplicable take-downs ever published, Salon offers an extended snark on why Reynolds shouldn't even be a movie star, which skirts libel, imho.)
Anyway, The Nines was a pleasant surprise. Again, no spoilers, and this is one of those you should see totally cold if you're going to see it, but of all the unique twists in this flick, the actress Melissa McCarthy is the biggest (forgive me, Lord). You NEVER see a fat person as one of the major characters in a flick, outside of John Goodman. McCarthy is so damn funny and charming she outshines Reynolds, which is surprising since his main gift as an actor is the synergy of those two qualities. Her first line acknowledging that she's fat made me laugh so hard I had to rewind to catch the next few lines.
In researching The Nines, I came across several other Reynolds films I missed, and have them queued up at the library. I'll keep you posted.
Thus far my favorite, and my family's favorite movie this summer is Super 8. You've seen the plot before, but then again, you'd seen the plot of J.J. Abram's Star Trek reboot before, too, and that was a blast, right?
TLD: Again with the synchronicity: Elle Fanning is one of the stars of Super 8, and I had seen both it and The Green Lantern before I saw The Nines. It was weird seeing the two stars of the big summer movies together in an older one, particularly given the subject matter of The Nines.
One thing that's wonderful about Super 8 is the actors are given room to act. There are whole portions of the story that just play across someone's face without them having to spit dialogue back and forth. I hadn't seen that in a while and it was refreshing.
And, like Star Trek, Abram's writing throws the characters into situations where you are frightened, thrilled, and laughing all at the same time. That's a gift, my friend.
If it's still in a theatre near you, go now. At least put it on your Netflix queue.
I'll say it again (as it's the theme of this post) see it COLD! Don't let anyone tell you a single thing about it. Don't read anything. Btw, this movie is OK for kids 10 and over. Or even 8 and older if they're more mature, can handle some scares, and you don't mind them hearing some mild profanity that nearly every TV show drops anymore.
Which brings us to Drive Angry, apparently yet another bid by Nicolas Cage to find a super-hero franchise. And failing yet again.
Yeah, it's mildly fun, but it's such a hard R that is so obviously inappropriately directed at teenage boys, moral prudes like me will find it off-putting. One sex scene was go graphic, my wife and I both gasped, and she asked me what it was rated. This is not a spoiler, because screwing so often is not a plot point, and it ain't here.
But, here's what you see: he's sitting, clothed (which is a plot point), and she's lying on her back pistoning her hips up and down. I've surfed past the porn on the free premium channel of the month that showed less. It dawned on me later they must've digitally removed her vulva, because you see it clearly, but there's not the standard topography of the same, which would've been visible in an un-altered shot. Instead it's smooth like a Barbie doll. Still, the scene is so graphic, I wonder how they got away with an R rating.
I see on imdb.com that it was originally in 3D, which explains some of the scenes, including the one above. While all 3D movies have the gratuitous 3D scenes, this one appears to have been created nearly completely out of scenes that would look cool in 3D, but are flat otherwise.
So, if you don't mind over-the-top sex and violence with your bubble gum, and can imagine how cool it would've looked in 3D, you might enjoy the time spent. Don't expect Tarantino though.
Note: Absolutely no spoilers in this post.
If this is the first thing you're reading about the documentary Catfish, make sure you read nothing else. See it cold. Do not have anything spoiled for you if you've manage to avoid any thus far. I didn't link to any other info about it for that reason. If you hunt for Catfish the documentary, chances are you'll get it. Here's what the box looks like:
The only thing I'll reveal - that is still not a spoiler - is it resonated with recent ruminations of mine around internet identity, particularly anonymity. Which appears to be a topic that's on other's minds as well: here and here.
This is one of the most touching, human documentaries I've seen in a while.
Oh, and speaking of documentaries, if you get a chance, make sure you catch How to Die in Oregon. Though, if you've lost someone to cancer recently, you may want to wait.
In other movie news, The Opinionated Homeschooler (she's back! yay!) asked why I didn't see Thor. After seeing The Green Lantern, I've re-discovered something I realized back when I read actual comic books: you like the ones you like and the rest are just lame. Or, the premise of the super hero clicks with you or not.
I didn't read many of the main superheroes as a kid because I found most of them silly, particularly Batman. A guy in a suit? With his little teenage orphan adoptee in another goofier suit? Hey, I'm here for the super powers. I read Superman, though I tired of all the alternate universes and stories that spanned two years worth of comic books, with an "Ed. note: See issue #425." every other panel to help you keep track of the story, a near impossibility. Spiderman was fun because the stories were usually self-contained and he was a smart-ass; and don't get me started about Mary Jane who probably launched her fair share of pre-pubescent boners. X-Men was and is laughable because all of their mutant powers are deus ex machina on crack. Need to walk through walls and freeze balls? We've got that mutant right here!
My favorites were: E-man (his girlfriend was a stripper!) along with Rog-2000 - a recurring co-feature, Fantastic Four (a babe, two smart-asses and a nice dad, what's not to like?), the She-Hulk (it was so soft-core, given the issues with ripping out of clothes), the Man-Thing (like Swamp Thing but uglier, scarier, and more existential - like Hamlet without the ability to soliloquy) , and the Harvey comics characters.
My brother and I benefited from the unique circumstance that my grandmother was best friends with another elderly lady who loved comic books, and she ordered so many the local drug store that stocked comics let her tack on the ones she wanted to their order, and she loved the Harvey characters. Casper was kinda interesting at times, and Hot Stuff the Little Devil was surreal, especially when some adults adopted his visage as the representation of a badass.
So, to circle around to The Opinionated Homeschooler's question, Thor never struck me, har har. I didn't like comics that had no levity whatsoever. The couple times I thumbed through a copy, it looked grim, dull, and (though I wouldn't have been able to articulate it at the time) somewhat homoerotic. Though having read "Little Dot" and "Wendy the Good Little Witch" I probably wouldn't have much of a defense of the machismo level of my reading at the time.
Iron Man? Another guy in a suit. Meh.
Now, I enjoyed the Green Lantern movie that's fresh out; his abilities have a similarity to E-man, my all-time fave. And I've loved the Iron Man and Batman movies. I even enjoyed the X-Men flicks, thought still rolled my eyes at the convenience of having a mutant who does just what's needed right when it's needed. I will see Thor when it's out on DVD, prolly.
None of those worked for me on the page, though.
I find myself synchronicitly in the midst of a Ryan Reynolds movie festival (he being the star of The Green Lantern).
I picked up The Nines simply because I've like most of his work so far, save for what was supposed to have been his vehicle to stardom, Van Wilder. His character in Blade III essentially is the movie. (In one of the most inexplicable take-downs ever published, Salon offers an extended snark on why Reynolds shouldn't even be a movie star, which skirts libel, imho.)
Anyway, The Nines was a pleasant surprise. Again, no spoilers, and this is one of those you should see totally cold if you're going to see it, but of all the unique twists in this flick, the actress Melissa McCarthy is the biggest (forgive me, Lord). You NEVER see a fat person as one of the major characters in a flick, outside of John Goodman. McCarthy is so damn funny and charming she outshines Reynolds, which is surprising since his main gift as an actor is the synergy of those two qualities. Her first line acknowledging that she's fat made me laugh so hard I had to rewind to catch the next few lines.
In researching The Nines, I came across several other Reynolds films I missed, and have them queued up at the library. I'll keep you posted.
Thus far my favorite, and my family's favorite movie this summer is Super 8. You've seen the plot before, but then again, you'd seen the plot of J.J. Abram's Star Trek reboot before, too, and that was a blast, right?
TLD: Again with the synchronicity: Elle Fanning is one of the stars of Super 8, and I had seen both it and The Green Lantern before I saw The Nines. It was weird seeing the two stars of the big summer movies together in an older one, particularly given the subject matter of The Nines.
One thing that's wonderful about Super 8 is the actors are given room to act. There are whole portions of the story that just play across someone's face without them having to spit dialogue back and forth. I hadn't seen that in a while and it was refreshing.
And, like Star Trek, Abram's writing throws the characters into situations where you are frightened, thrilled, and laughing all at the same time. That's a gift, my friend.
If it's still in a theatre near you, go now. At least put it on your Netflix queue.
I'll say it again (as it's the theme of this post) see it COLD! Don't let anyone tell you a single thing about it. Don't read anything. Btw, this movie is OK for kids 10 and over. Or even 8 and older if they're more mature, can handle some scares, and you don't mind them hearing some mild profanity that nearly every TV show drops anymore.
Which brings us to Drive Angry, apparently yet another bid by Nicolas Cage to find a super-hero franchise. And failing yet again.
Yeah, it's mildly fun, but it's such a hard R that is so obviously inappropriately directed at teenage boys, moral prudes like me will find it off-putting. One sex scene was go graphic, my wife and I both gasped, and she asked me what it was rated. This is not a spoiler, because screwing so often is not a plot point, and it ain't here.
But, here's what you see: he's sitting, clothed (which is a plot point), and she's lying on her back pistoning her hips up and down. I've surfed past the porn on the free premium channel of the month that showed less. It dawned on me later they must've digitally removed her vulva, because you see it clearly, but there's not the standard topography of the same, which would've been visible in an un-altered shot. Instead it's smooth like a Barbie doll. Still, the scene is so graphic, I wonder how they got away with an R rating.
I see on imdb.com that it was originally in 3D, which explains some of the scenes, including the one above. While all 3D movies have the gratuitous 3D scenes, this one appears to have been created nearly completely out of scenes that would look cool in 3D, but are flat otherwise.
So, if you don't mind over-the-top sex and violence with your bubble gum, and can imagine how cool it would've looked in 3D, you might enjoy the time spent. Don't expect Tarantino though.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Fun Meme - Your First Album
1 - Go to wikipedia and hit random. The title of the first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use photoshop, GIMP, or similar (picnik.com) to put it all together.
Here's mine:
There is a band or two really named "The Now" and if you're in that band, feel free to use the above; though you'll want to get permission on the image from here.
1 - Go to wikipedia and hit random. The title of the first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use photoshop, GIMP, or similar (picnik.com) to put it all together.
Here's mine:
There is a band or two really named "The Now" and if you're in that band, feel free to use the above; though you'll want to get permission on the image from here.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Trivial Post on Pop Trivia
Came across some new rock/pop trivia - and being the Cliff Claven of the same, thought I'd share it with you:
- Paul Simon took the phrase of “Mother and Child Reunion” (for both song title and lyric) from a menu selection on a Chinatown restaurant where chicken and eggs were served together. [RS 1130, pp. 63.] Fitting for a happy-sounding song about a dark thing: "this sad and mournful day."
- Paul McCartney is a good friend of Simon's, and called him up on his 64th birthday and said, "I'm sorry, but this has to be done," and sang "When I'm Sixty-Four." [RS 1130, pp. 56.] Can you imagine one of The Beatles calling you on your 64th and singing to you?
- "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" was about breaking up with Shelley Duvall, and the lyrics were inspired by advice from Lorne Michaels (of SNL fame). [RS 1130, pp. 63.] And here I thought it was about Carrie Fisher. However, most of Hearts and Bones (one of me fave albums of all time) is about the Princess.
The name "The Beatles" was partially derived from their love of Buddy Holly and The Crickets – they are essentially named after The Crickets. (Don't recall where I read this.)
Came across some new rock/pop trivia - and being the Cliff Claven of the same, thought I'd share it with you:
- Paul Simon took the phrase of “Mother and Child Reunion” (for both song title and lyric) from a menu selection on a Chinatown restaurant where chicken and eggs were served together. [RS 1130, pp. 63.] Fitting for a happy-sounding song about a dark thing: "this sad and mournful day."
- Paul McCartney is a good friend of Simon's, and called him up on his 64th birthday and said, "I'm sorry, but this has to be done," and sang "When I'm Sixty-Four." [RS 1130, pp. 56.] Can you imagine one of The Beatles calling you on your 64th and singing to you?
- "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" was about breaking up with Shelley Duvall, and the lyrics were inspired by advice from Lorne Michaels (of SNL fame). [RS 1130, pp. 63.] And here I thought it was about Carrie Fisher. However, most of Hearts and Bones (one of me fave albums of all time) is about the Princess.
The name "The Beatles" was partially derived from their love of Buddy Holly and The Crickets – they are essentially named after The Crickets. (Don't recall where I read this.)
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
More movies and less computer
Well, dammit, my favorite computer hauled off and died on my ass. I'd made a Xubuntu box from a decrepit laptop a while ago and came to love it. It was the best internet computer evar. I would follow links with impunity knowing that it wouldn't suddenly get all borked up from some damn script running, or some stupid hacker trap.
On a Windows box, half the time I will hold the mouse over the link to read the URL before clicking through, afraid some evil site will wipe out the computer, along with precious and un-backed-up pics of my wife and kids.
My sweet little Xubuntu box was fast. The multi-tasking was just awesome. I'm still taken aback when a Windows machine pauses to ram something through memory or swap crap on the disk. I miss the smoothness and speed of good 'ole Xubuntu.
The loss would've stung more if I relied on local software to get things done, but I've moved mostly to Google Office to write stuff I'm going to put on the web or notes for work and such. I'm still paranoid enough (because I know a LOT of system administrators) to not use anything but a local machine (nothing on the web or a network) for stuff I want kept private. It's just a simple fact that if your stuff resides on someone else's system, someone else can look at it. Fuck "the security of the cloud" stuff; that's a lie along the lines of "the check is in the mail" and "I'll pull out." I've heard actual IT professionals who claim to know what they're doing claim the cloud is secure due to the fact that everything is so distributed. I managed to withhold a snort of derision when that was uttered.
I'm talking to you, fiction writers. Seriously. Keep that novel local. Back it up religiously. Heck, print it out. I have a writer buddy who does that just to see the stack because it encourages him.
So, now I have to find a new place to put private stuff. (Note: before I completed this post, I was given an abandoned laptop that has no fan and no moving parts outside of the hard drive. It's cool, quiet, and lasts for hours on one charge. That more than makes up for the fact that it's not all that peppy, and the fact that it's Windows. I am in strong like with this baby.)
Enough whining. Here are some of my thoughts on movies I've seen lately.
You Again
Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis star as the mothers of competitive daughters and who have their own contentious past.
Kinda cute, but really aimed at the ladies - the way movies with lots of things that go boom or splatter are aimed at teenage boys. I think the ladies will like (not love) this movie, but if you are the SO, you might want to have a book lying around ready to go, which luckily I had. I was able to pay attention to both and easily catch the good parts.
The thing I enjoyed the most was an extra from the web, that you can view here.
Due Date
Practically a remake of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, but with some R-rated jokes tossed in. A little rote, at that.
Yeah, I laughed. Zach Galifianakis is always fun to watch.
Worth an hour and a half.
The Switch
Another Jennifer Aniston romcom. Even with Jason Bateman, who's a treasure, I found this one kind of a yawn. There really were no surprises left over from the preview.
Why in the hell can't Aniston find a good script?
Love and Other Drugs
My my. If you want to see Anne Hathaway quite nude and simulating lots of sex, this is the go-to flick for that.
I recall Hathaway, when hosting the Oscars, bemoaning the fact that most actresses who did a nude scene in a serious movie typically got an Oscar nod. I wondered what movie she meant until I saw this. You see, it's a serious movie because her character has Parkinson's. And screws a lot because it doesn't matter anymore.
Only worth it if you wanna see the aforementioned. And you can fast-forward to those parts to save precious minutes of your life, of course.
World's Greatest Dad
Bobcat Goldthwait directs Robin Williams as the father of Daryl Sabara ("Juni" of Spykids). Daryl's character is a high school lout who kills himself through autoerotic asphyxiation (what David Carradine died from IRL). Robin's character is a teacher who's a frustrated writer.
He doesn't want it to get out how his son actually died, so he unlatches the body from its yank station and hangs it in the closet, then writes a suicide note and fake journal, which finally launch him into the literary fame he's always wanted. Hilarity ensues.
Not that good. I recommend a pass on this one.
TLD: Between this movie and the Anne Hathaway movie, a lot of my sweet, innocent memories of much better movies I've watched with my kids (the Spy Kids series and Ella Enchanted) got kinda crumpled. I think I might begin avoiding latter movies from the stars of kid movies.
Hereafter
I freakin' hated hated hated this movie. It was like watching someone with a brain disorder wander down the street for a couple hours, then just turn a corner and disappear, leaving you to wonder only why you bothered to watch the whole thing.
Basically, Matt Damon is psychic since he got brain damage as a kid, so when he meets people who have died and come back, or people who've lost someone, he can see some vague details about each. The end. Really.
Life as We Know It
This is the movie I enjoyed the most of those in this post.
Katherine Heigl stars as a single woman who, as one of the Godparents, ends up with the child of her best friend when she and her husband die in a car accident. She has to share the duty with the best bud of the husband, whom she despises, of course. Wouldn't have a movie otherwise, right?
Well, to my surprise, this is one of the better movies about raising a kid I've seen. It balances the agony with the ecstasy, and gets it pretty much right. They even manage to give the baby a bit of a personality.
I think people who have kids will dig this more than those who don't; however, this is a primo date movie/chickflick, so if you're a single dude an not opposed, watch this with your sweetie and you just might have a good time, and see a decent movie.
Social Network
Ah, the much-lauded movie about the creation of Facebook and the intestinal explosion of lawsuits that followed.
My wife couldn't get through it, and I found it alternately boring and infuriating.
I don't know which kind of people I find more repugnant, uber-rich entitled brats or jerkwad IT creeps. (I've met my share of both.) Outside of the girl who dumps the guy who then creates an early version of Facebook to humiliate her, there's not one sympathetic character in the flick. That's especially distressing since the events and people are real. (Even this week there are still stories in the news about who's suing whom, still.)
So, I spent half the time repelled and the rest wondering why there's so much leeerve for the thing.
I think I'll recommend you decide for yourself, since I'm in the minority here. At least get it from the library or Redbox in case you think it sucks, too.
Fair Game
I really wanted this to be good, given that it, too, is based on real-life events when Dick and Bush illegally outed CIA agent Valerie Plame for petty political revenge, and to try to cover up the lie of the justification of the war in Iraq.
But, for some reason, it's a little dull even though there appears to be enough intrigue in the events that - had it been done right - would've made it pretty good.
I did wonder if my simmering anger ruined the movie for me, because as far as I'm concerned, all the officials who perpetrated the crimes should be getting an ass-pounding in prison at this very moment, and not one of them are. But, no, it's just too much of a spinach movie that sorta squandered a great story.
I used to say that the Republican's goal in America is to turn us into just another third-world backwater much like all of the continents south of us, but now I say, we're there! When the tippy-top of our govt. can do this and not one of them is punished, when income disparity is so large, and when more developed countries view our labor force the way we view China's, dude, WE'RE THERE!
If you want to know the events, however, this is the place to go.
Btw, I think this is the only time I've seen a flick where the real-life person is actually prettier than the actress who plays her, which is something since Naomi Watts is a cutie.
Foo Fighters: Back and Forth
This is a wonderful little documentary making the rounds on cable right now. It covers the entire career of the awesome Dave Grohl, and the journey of the Foo Fighters thus far.
I need to recuse myself a bit, because shows on rock history and minutia are like crack to me. When VH1's "Behind the Music" premired, I was unable to tear myself off the couch if one was on. Eventually, when my wife would hear the theme music, she would sigh heavily or mutter an obscenity under her breath. I'd offer, "Hey, at least I don't like sports," which was once met with a weary, "at this point, I almost wish you did." I am in music geek heaven when I watch one of the "Classic Album" docs.
Anyway, Foo Fighters: Back and Forth is full of great and sometimes trying moments. I've often wondered what it would be like to be the drummer in a band led by one of the best drummers ever. That question is addressed and answered by both of the guys who've had the privilege.
My family's favorite moment was when Grohl is trying to lay down a guitar part for the new album that's just been released, and his little daughter comes up and pecks him on the shoulder, admonishing him for not taking her swimming like he'd promised. Bless his heart, while one of his heroes, Husker Du's Bob Mould, lays down a vocal, he suits up and hits the pool with his girl.
This is a must if you're a music fan, or a fan of the Foo's. Check your local listing.
Sucker Punch
It'll have a dedicated following, but Sucker Punch pretty much sucks. Critical consensus concurs.
My buddy and I were all amped up to see it. I went into it cold, not even remembering the preview. I did see some production stills on the web accidentally and those only made me look forward to it. On top of it all, my buddy has very similar tastes in movies, so I expected at least something good, if not great.
When it was obvious that it sucked out loud (more on the audio in a bit), I gave up and just decided to go with it. About then my buddy leans over and says, "I guess this is 2011's
Heavy Metal." Which was precisely what I was thinking at that very moment.
TLD: This generation not only has its Heavy Metal, it also has its
Feelings (or Run, Joey, Run, if you want to address sheer horribleness and not just universal hatred towards): Rebecca Black's
Friday.
Stylistically, it's very rich. The visuals are solid, express a consistent vision, and are total eye candy. It strives to be pornographic without nudity or sex and violent without blood. (A young friend of mine thinks this is because they wanted to keep a PG-13 rating, though it really felt like a deliberate stylistic choice to me.) I think the only blood you ever see is in the "real" opening scenes, and even then it's just a smear on someone's hand when the character checks to see if another is hurt - you see more blood when you have a bloody nose.
The episodes of the movie are each set to a classic rock song that directly references the theme of that segment, most performed by someone other than the original artist, probably because they needed to be extended and matched to the action.
That would've been OK, if whomever equalized the songs wasn't completely DEAF. All of the songs blare at you in monochromatic mid-range; the entire bass spectrum is simply not there. When in-your-face music is a major aspect of the picture, you'd think you'd make is as lush as possible and take advantage of the sound systems theaters have. And I know it wasn't the theater's fault, because the explosions and such certainly make use of the bottom end of the dynamic range. I'd love to know the story behind who made that choice, because it was a very very bad one.
Finally, I don't know why the movie is called suckerpunch, because it telegraphs its "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" ending within the first 10 minutes of the flick.
If you see it, see it on DVD so you can adjust the equalization for enjoyment.
Well, dammit, my favorite computer hauled off and died on my ass. I'd made a Xubuntu box from a decrepit laptop a while ago and came to love it. It was the best internet computer evar. I would follow links with impunity knowing that it wouldn't suddenly get all borked up from some damn script running, or some stupid hacker trap.
On a Windows box, half the time I will hold the mouse over the link to read the URL before clicking through, afraid some evil site will wipe out the computer, along with precious and un-backed-up pics of my wife and kids.
My sweet little Xubuntu box was fast. The multi-tasking was just awesome. I'm still taken aback when a Windows machine pauses to ram something through memory or swap crap on the disk. I miss the smoothness and speed of good 'ole Xubuntu.
The loss would've stung more if I relied on local software to get things done, but I've moved mostly to Google Office to write stuff I'm going to put on the web or notes for work and such. I'm still paranoid enough (because I know a LOT of system administrators) to not use anything but a local machine (nothing on the web or a network) for stuff I want kept private. It's just a simple fact that if your stuff resides on someone else's system, someone else can look at it. Fuck "the security of the cloud" stuff; that's a lie along the lines of "the check is in the mail" and "I'll pull out." I've heard actual IT professionals who claim to know what they're doing claim the cloud is secure due to the fact that everything is so distributed. I managed to withhold a snort of derision when that was uttered.
I'm talking to you, fiction writers. Seriously. Keep that novel local. Back it up religiously. Heck, print it out. I have a writer buddy who does that just to see the stack because it encourages him.
So, now I have to find a new place to put private stuff. (Note: before I completed this post, I was given an abandoned laptop that has no fan and no moving parts outside of the hard drive. It's cool, quiet, and lasts for hours on one charge. That more than makes up for the fact that it's not all that peppy, and the fact that it's Windows. I am in strong like with this baby.)
Enough whining. Here are some of my thoughts on movies I've seen lately.
You Again
Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis star as the mothers of competitive daughters and who have their own contentious past.
Kinda cute, but really aimed at the ladies - the way movies with lots of things that go boom or splatter are aimed at teenage boys. I think the ladies will like (not love) this movie, but if you are the SO, you might want to have a book lying around ready to go, which luckily I had. I was able to pay attention to both and easily catch the good parts.
The thing I enjoyed the most was an extra from the web, that you can view here.
Due Date
Practically a remake of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, but with some R-rated jokes tossed in. A little rote, at that.
Yeah, I laughed. Zach Galifianakis is always fun to watch.
Worth an hour and a half.
The Switch
Another Jennifer Aniston romcom. Even with Jason Bateman, who's a treasure, I found this one kind of a yawn. There really were no surprises left over from the preview.
Why in the hell can't Aniston find a good script?
Love and Other Drugs
My my. If you want to see Anne Hathaway quite nude and simulating lots of sex, this is the go-to flick for that.
I recall Hathaway, when hosting the Oscars, bemoaning the fact that most actresses who did a nude scene in a serious movie typically got an Oscar nod. I wondered what movie she meant until I saw this. You see, it's a serious movie because her character has Parkinson's. And screws a lot because it doesn't matter anymore.
Only worth it if you wanna see the aforementioned. And you can fast-forward to those parts to save precious minutes of your life, of course.
World's Greatest Dad
Bobcat Goldthwait directs Robin Williams as the father of Daryl Sabara ("Juni" of Spykids). Daryl's character is a high school lout who kills himself through autoerotic asphyxiation (what David Carradine died from IRL). Robin's character is a teacher who's a frustrated writer.
He doesn't want it to get out how his son actually died, so he unlatches the body from its yank station and hangs it in the closet, then writes a suicide note and fake journal, which finally launch him into the literary fame he's always wanted. Hilarity ensues.
Not that good. I recommend a pass on this one.
TLD: Between this movie and the Anne Hathaway movie, a lot of my sweet, innocent memories of much better movies I've watched with my kids (the Spy Kids series and Ella Enchanted) got kinda crumpled. I think I might begin avoiding latter movies from the stars of kid movies.
Hereafter
I freakin' hated hated hated this movie. It was like watching someone with a brain disorder wander down the street for a couple hours, then just turn a corner and disappear, leaving you to wonder only why you bothered to watch the whole thing.
Basically, Matt Damon is psychic since he got brain damage as a kid, so when he meets people who have died and come back, or people who've lost someone, he can see some vague details about each. The end. Really.
Life as We Know It
This is the movie I enjoyed the most of those in this post.
Katherine Heigl stars as a single woman who, as one of the Godparents, ends up with the child of her best friend when she and her husband die in a car accident. She has to share the duty with the best bud of the husband, whom she despises, of course. Wouldn't have a movie otherwise, right?
Well, to my surprise, this is one of the better movies about raising a kid I've seen. It balances the agony with the ecstasy, and gets it pretty much right. They even manage to give the baby a bit of a personality.
I think people who have kids will dig this more than those who don't; however, this is a primo date movie/chickflick, so if you're a single dude an not opposed, watch this with your sweetie and you just might have a good time, and see a decent movie.
Social Network
Ah, the much-lauded movie about the creation of Facebook and the intestinal explosion of lawsuits that followed.
My wife couldn't get through it, and I found it alternately boring and infuriating.
I don't know which kind of people I find more repugnant, uber-rich entitled brats or jerkwad IT creeps. (I've met my share of both.) Outside of the girl who dumps the guy who then creates an early version of Facebook to humiliate her, there's not one sympathetic character in the flick. That's especially distressing since the events and people are real. (Even this week there are still stories in the news about who's suing whom, still.)
So, I spent half the time repelled and the rest wondering why there's so much leeerve for the thing.
I think I'll recommend you decide for yourself, since I'm in the minority here. At least get it from the library or Redbox in case you think it sucks, too.
Fair Game
I really wanted this to be good, given that it, too, is based on real-life events when Dick and Bush illegally outed CIA agent Valerie Plame for petty political revenge, and to try to cover up the lie of the justification of the war in Iraq.
But, for some reason, it's a little dull even though there appears to be enough intrigue in the events that - had it been done right - would've made it pretty good.
I did wonder if my simmering anger ruined the movie for me, because as far as I'm concerned, all the officials who perpetrated the crimes should be getting an ass-pounding in prison at this very moment, and not one of them are. But, no, it's just too much of a spinach movie that sorta squandered a great story.
I used to say that the Republican's goal in America is to turn us into just another third-world backwater much like all of the continents south of us, but now I say, we're there! When the tippy-top of our govt. can do this and not one of them is punished, when income disparity is so large, and when more developed countries view our labor force the way we view China's, dude, WE'RE THERE!
If you want to know the events, however, this is the place to go.
Btw, I think this is the only time I've seen a flick where the real-life person is actually prettier than the actress who plays her, which is something since Naomi Watts is a cutie.
Foo Fighters: Back and Forth
This is a wonderful little documentary making the rounds on cable right now. It covers the entire career of the awesome Dave Grohl, and the journey of the Foo Fighters thus far.
I need to recuse myself a bit, because shows on rock history and minutia are like crack to me. When VH1's "Behind the Music" premired, I was unable to tear myself off the couch if one was on. Eventually, when my wife would hear the theme music, she would sigh heavily or mutter an obscenity under her breath. I'd offer, "Hey, at least I don't like sports," which was once met with a weary, "at this point, I almost wish you did." I am in music geek heaven when I watch one of the "Classic Album" docs.
Anyway, Foo Fighters: Back and Forth is full of great and sometimes trying moments. I've often wondered what it would be like to be the drummer in a band led by one of the best drummers ever. That question is addressed and answered by both of the guys who've had the privilege.
My family's favorite moment was when Grohl is trying to lay down a guitar part for the new album that's just been released, and his little daughter comes up and pecks him on the shoulder, admonishing him for not taking her swimming like he'd promised. Bless his heart, while one of his heroes, Husker Du's Bob Mould, lays down a vocal, he suits up and hits the pool with his girl.
This is a must if you're a music fan, or a fan of the Foo's. Check your local listing.
Sucker Punch
It'll have a dedicated following, but Sucker Punch pretty much sucks. Critical consensus concurs.
My buddy and I were all amped up to see it. I went into it cold, not even remembering the preview. I did see some production stills on the web accidentally and those only made me look forward to it. On top of it all, my buddy has very similar tastes in movies, so I expected at least something good, if not great.
When it was obvious that it sucked out loud (more on the audio in a bit), I gave up and just decided to go with it. About then my buddy leans over and says, "I guess this is 2011's
Heavy Metal." Which was precisely what I was thinking at that very moment.
TLD: This generation not only has its Heavy Metal, it also has its
Feelings (or Run, Joey, Run, if you want to address sheer horribleness and not just universal hatred towards): Rebecca Black's
Friday.
Stylistically, it's very rich. The visuals are solid, express a consistent vision, and are total eye candy. It strives to be pornographic without nudity or sex and violent without blood. (A young friend of mine thinks this is because they wanted to keep a PG-13 rating, though it really felt like a deliberate stylistic choice to me.) I think the only blood you ever see is in the "real" opening scenes, and even then it's just a smear on someone's hand when the character checks to see if another is hurt - you see more blood when you have a bloody nose.
The episodes of the movie are each set to a classic rock song that directly references the theme of that segment, most performed by someone other than the original artist, probably because they needed to be extended and matched to the action.
That would've been OK, if whomever equalized the songs wasn't completely DEAF. All of the songs blare at you in monochromatic mid-range; the entire bass spectrum is simply not there. When in-your-face music is a major aspect of the picture, you'd think you'd make is as lush as possible and take advantage of the sound systems theaters have. And I know it wasn't the theater's fault, because the explosions and such certainly make use of the bottom end of the dynamic range. I'd love to know the story behind who made that choice, because it was a very very bad one.
Finally, I don't know why the movie is called suckerpunch, because it telegraphs its "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" ending within the first 10 minutes of the flick.
If you see it, see it on DVD so you can adjust the equalization for enjoyment.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Drive-by Reviews of Recent Viewings
Cold Souls
Paul Giamatti brings his particular gift of infusing potentially repugnant characters with a bit of grace and charisma to this low-budget rumination on what it might mean to possess a soul. (I suspect he's a very charming IRL.)
Here, he plays "himself" - an actor named Paul Giamatti - who's currently starring in a Chekov play where, after seeing an ad for soul removal and its benefits, decides he'd perform the role better soulless.
Turns out there's a black market for these removed souls which even involves "soul mules." Through this we discover that anyone who uses (wears? injects?) someone else's soul is left with something like a residue that remains behind from large emotional events - a child dying, for instance.
There's such a thing as soul envy, too. For example, if you carry someone's soul and discover it's better than yours, you tend to want to keep it.
I enjoyed this movie in that mild way one does when a movie is full of nice little moments and clever ideas, but doesn't tip over the lip into something you love wildly. Kinda like a date where you enjoy the person's company, but there's no romance in the air (and no one utters some of the most acidic words in the English language, "Let's just be friends).
If you wanted to have a little movie festival with a theme of directly and viscerally experiencing what it would be like to be someone else, you could queue up Cold Souls with: Being John Malkovich and Brainstorm.
Eat Pray Fuck
Yes, that is what it should've been called had the publishers had the guts to follow the calling-a-spade-a-spade trend like the books Sh*t My Dad Says and The No Asshole Rule did.
The plot follows the title; she loads up on pasta in Italy, goes to Bali and believes the crap a shaman tells her (which isnothing much more than your average horoscope bs), goes to India where she witnesses a couple enter into an arranged marriage (which is meaningful for her because she's left her husband), and then goes back to Bali and finds a hunk-cicle to bone for a while, the end.
I enjoyed this in spite of myself, but I think that's because I had no expectations, I watched it out of the corner of my eye while playing games with my six-year-old, and Julia Roberts is just one of those people who's a true movie star, thus she's always interesting to watch.
Throughout, I felt the plain-jane cousin of the emotion of bliss, known as contentment. It was akin to drinking a nice cup of good tea on a brisk day, though not like drinking an awesome cup of coffee first thing in the morning, which is more of a needful experience.
Like a lot of reviewers on Amazon noted, it's nearly impossible to ignore the fact that someone could do this only if someone else was bankrolling them or they were independently wealthy, so spiritual enlightenment for the masses this is not. But, if you were able to overlook the deluxe apartments the under-employed "Friends" had in their sitcom, then you can overlook the masquerade of getting to party on someone else's dime and claim personal growth (outside of the waistline).
Hey, if anyone wants to pay for a couple year's worth of my dorking around in foreign lands, I'll wrote a book claiming anything you want, short of stating today's Republicans and Tea Baggers are honest, reasonable people.
This is one of those flicks where if it comes on TV and you've got nothing better Tivo'd or don't have a book lying around, it'll fill a couple hours harmlessly.
Jennifer's Body
It's official: I just don't like today's torture porn/horror fests. They're too graphic (though, somewhat hypocritically, my favorite movie of all time was the most graphic of it's day: John Carpenter's The Thing), sometimes they're legitimately too scary (I still recall The Grudge at unfortunate times when I'm sleepless in the wee hours and find myself alone in the bowels of the house with all the lights off).
Besides, there's almost nothing to this that hasn't been done before - though the creation of the monster is worth a grin: the character played by Megan Fox, who appears to be playing herself, is offered up as a virgin sacrifice, and since she's anything but, the result isn't as intended.. There was too much gratuitous lesbian stuff, too.
Getting back to John Carpenter's The Thing, it occurs to me that I tend to dig sci-fi-related gore, but supernatural/horror gore either gets my eyes or my stomach rolling.
If you're a fan of the genre, you might want to check this out if it's free, but otherwise skip it.
Morning Glory
Cute little workplace comedy (isn't this a distinct genre anymore?) with no big surprises and a lot of similarity to Harrison Ford's other job-com Working Girl, except this time he's too old to bag the babe without all of us yacking our Jujyfruits into our popcorn.
Another rainy-day, don't-want-to-move-from-the-couch, some-channel-just-started-playing-it-so-I-guess-I'll-watch-it kinda thang.
Jackass 3
There are three kinds of people in the world, those who laugh at Jackass movies (and TV installments), those who are appalled by the same, and those who died trying one of the stunts.
I'm in the first category. I used my little one's portable DVD player to watch it while they all watched something chick-friendly and my chortling intrigued them so much, I had to switch it to the primary TV and man the remote to provide a PG version of the antics. They all laughed very hard, too.
Not for the faint of heart. Disgusting. Embarrassing. Revolting. Wrong on every level. Probably contributes to the decline of society.
But if the visage of someone's ass painted green to look like the rolling hills in a model train set which then rockets liquid poo into the air like an obscene volcano will make you grin in spite of yourself, check it out.
Oh, and you get to see someone use his dick like a baseball bat and then see someone else try to catch the pop-fly in his mouth. If that doesn't intrigue, what possibly could?
Cold Souls
Paul Giamatti brings his particular gift of infusing potentially repugnant characters with a bit of grace and charisma to this low-budget rumination on what it might mean to possess a soul. (I suspect he's a very charming IRL.)
Here, he plays "himself" - an actor named Paul Giamatti - who's currently starring in a Chekov play where, after seeing an ad for soul removal and its benefits, decides he'd perform the role better soulless.
Turns out there's a black market for these removed souls which even involves "soul mules." Through this we discover that anyone who uses (wears? injects?) someone else's soul is left with something like a residue that remains behind from large emotional events - a child dying, for instance.
There's such a thing as soul envy, too. For example, if you carry someone's soul and discover it's better than yours, you tend to want to keep it.
I enjoyed this movie in that mild way one does when a movie is full of nice little moments and clever ideas, but doesn't tip over the lip into something you love wildly. Kinda like a date where you enjoy the person's company, but there's no romance in the air (and no one utters some of the most acidic words in the English language, "Let's just be friends).
If you wanted to have a little movie festival with a theme of directly and viscerally experiencing what it would be like to be someone else, you could queue up Cold Souls with: Being John Malkovich and Brainstorm.
Eat Pray Fuck
Yes, that is what it should've been called had the publishers had the guts to follow the calling-a-spade-a-spade trend like the books Sh*t My Dad Says and The No Asshole Rule did.
The plot follows the title; she loads up on pasta in Italy, goes to Bali and believes the crap a shaman tells her (which isnothing much more than your average horoscope bs), goes to India where she witnesses a couple enter into an arranged marriage (which is meaningful for her because she's left her husband), and then goes back to Bali and finds a hunk-cicle to bone for a while, the end.
I enjoyed this in spite of myself, but I think that's because I had no expectations, I watched it out of the corner of my eye while playing games with my six-year-old, and Julia Roberts is just one of those people who's a true movie star, thus she's always interesting to watch.
Throughout, I felt the plain-jane cousin of the emotion of bliss, known as contentment. It was akin to drinking a nice cup of good tea on a brisk day, though not like drinking an awesome cup of coffee first thing in the morning, which is more of a needful experience.
Like a lot of reviewers on Amazon noted, it's nearly impossible to ignore the fact that someone could do this only if someone else was bankrolling them or they were independently wealthy, so spiritual enlightenment for the masses this is not. But, if you were able to overlook the deluxe apartments the under-employed "Friends" had in their sitcom, then you can overlook the masquerade of getting to party on someone else's dime and claim personal growth (outside of the waistline).
Hey, if anyone wants to pay for a couple year's worth of my dorking around in foreign lands, I'll wrote a book claiming anything you want, short of stating today's Republicans and Tea Baggers are honest, reasonable people.
This is one of those flicks where if it comes on TV and you've got nothing better Tivo'd or don't have a book lying around, it'll fill a couple hours harmlessly.
Jennifer's Body
It's official: I just don't like today's torture porn/horror fests. They're too graphic (though, somewhat hypocritically, my favorite movie of all time was the most graphic of it's day: John Carpenter's The Thing), sometimes they're legitimately too scary (I still recall The Grudge at unfortunate times when I'm sleepless in the wee hours and find myself alone in the bowels of the house with all the lights off).
Besides, there's almost nothing to this that hasn't been done before - though the creation of the monster is worth a grin: the character played by Megan Fox, who appears to be playing herself, is offered up as a virgin sacrifice, and since she's anything but, the result isn't as intended.. There was too much gratuitous lesbian stuff, too.
Getting back to John Carpenter's The Thing, it occurs to me that I tend to dig sci-fi-related gore, but supernatural/horror gore either gets my eyes or my stomach rolling.
If you're a fan of the genre, you might want to check this out if it's free, but otherwise skip it.
Morning Glory
Cute little workplace comedy (isn't this a distinct genre anymore?) with no big surprises and a lot of similarity to Harrison Ford's other job-com Working Girl, except this time he's too old to bag the babe without all of us yacking our Jujyfruits into our popcorn.
Another rainy-day, don't-want-to-move-from-the-couch, some-channel-just-started-playing-it-so-I-guess-I'll-watch-it kinda thang.
Jackass 3
There are three kinds of people in the world, those who laugh at Jackass movies (and TV installments), those who are appalled by the same, and those who died trying one of the stunts.
I'm in the first category. I used my little one's portable DVD player to watch it while they all watched something chick-friendly and my chortling intrigued them so much, I had to switch it to the primary TV and man the remote to provide a PG version of the antics. They all laughed very hard, too.
Not for the faint of heart. Disgusting. Embarrassing. Revolting. Wrong on every level. Probably contributes to the decline of society.
But if the visage of someone's ass painted green to look like the rolling hills in a model train set which then rockets liquid poo into the air like an obscene volcano will make you grin in spite of yourself, check it out.
Oh, and you get to see someone use his dick like a baseball bat and then see someone else try to catch the pop-fly in his mouth. If that doesn't intrigue, what possibly could?
Thursday, March 10, 2011
From bad to worse
Warning: a political post, which I suck at.
So, it’s been a glorious week for America.
- Wisconsin Republicans manage to bust the public sector union.
- The Republicans in the House go after net neutrality, so that corporations can fuck us all over with “preferential treatment [to large corporations] in the form of tiered services”.
- And, via a sting orchestrated by James O'Keefe, a conservative ass-pounder, the vice president for development for NPR, Ron Schiller, was recorded saying some shite about Tea Baggers and subsequently suspended. (Free speech? Fuck that!) Here are various thrusts related to the story: wham, wham, wham.
Fuckers.
Warning: a political post, which I suck at.
So, it’s been a glorious week for America.
- Wisconsin Republicans manage to bust the public sector union.
- The Republicans in the House go after net neutrality, so that corporations can fuck us all over with “preferential treatment [to large corporations] in the form of tiered services”.
- And, via a sting orchestrated by James O'Keefe, a conservative ass-pounder, the vice president for development for NPR, Ron Schiller, was recorded saying some shite about Tea Baggers and subsequently suspended. (Free speech? Fuck that!) Here are various thrusts related to the story: wham, wham, wham.
Fuckers.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Rango
This post is kind of a spoiler; if you intend to go to Rango (the new cartoon starring Johnny Depp as a chameleon), skip it.
Ebert gives the film a glowing review, and as a family we had a deep need to get everyone into the theatre, so there we were. We loves ourselves some cinema.
The general family review was "cute, but've seen better." The six-year-old appeared bored at times.
I've got to remind myself to read my other go-to critic, Peter Travers, when Ebert raves, and vice-versa.
Wait for the video if your kids will allow it. Adults without young kids can skip it altogether.
Originally, I was just going to post the above, and not give away the best line in case you decide to see it, but since Travers gives away the best line in his review, I'm going to as well.
The plot is straight-up hero's journey fare. When all appears lost, our hero wanders into the desert and meets God ("the spirit of the west" in the film's nomenclature), who is in the form of Clint Eastwood piloting a golf cart. When our hero asks if he's in heaven, the Great Spirit responds:
That floored the adult portion of the audience. I still chuckle when I think of it.
I will be sure to use that at parties this summer.
This post is kind of a spoiler; if you intend to go to Rango (the new cartoon starring Johnny Depp as a chameleon), skip it.
Ebert gives the film a glowing review, and as a family we had a deep need to get everyone into the theatre, so there we were. We loves ourselves some cinema.
The general family review was "cute, but've seen better." The six-year-old appeared bored at times.
I've got to remind myself to read my other go-to critic, Peter Travers, when Ebert raves, and vice-versa.
Wait for the video if your kids will allow it. Adults without young kids can skip it altogether.
Originally, I was just going to post the above, and not give away the best line in case you decide to see it, but since Travers gives away the best line in his review, I'm going to as well.
The plot is straight-up hero's journey fare. When all appears lost, our hero wanders into the desert and meets God ("the spirit of the west" in the film's nomenclature), who is in the form of Clint Eastwood piloting a golf cart. When our hero asks if he's in heaven, the Great Spirit responds:
If this was heaven, kid, we'd all be eating Pop-Tarts with Kim Novak.
That floored the adult portion of the audience. I still chuckle when I think of it.
I will be sure to use that at parties this summer.
Friday, March 04, 2011
My New Favorite Piece of Trivia
We've all heard the phrase, "Does not compute."
Who's the one who made it a meme? Julie Newmar, aka Catwoman (the one all of our loins remember - no disrespect to the lovely Eartha Kitt).
See, there was this show called My Living Doll that premiered in 1964 on CBS, created and produced by Desilu and the creative staff behind My Favorite Martian. The premise was this scientist has created a robot (a sexy, female robot, of course) and he gives it to a bachelor psychologist friend of his to train it to make it "more human."
The robot's refrain when "she" was asked something she didn't understand was: "Does not compute." Before Lost in Space, even.
You can watch snippets and read some history here.
We've all heard the phrase, "Does not compute."
Who's the one who made it a meme? Julie Newmar, aka Catwoman (the one all of our loins remember - no disrespect to the lovely Eartha Kitt).
See, there was this show called My Living Doll that premiered in 1964 on CBS, created and produced by Desilu and the creative staff behind My Favorite Martian. The premise was this scientist has created a robot (a sexy, female robot, of course) and he gives it to a bachelor psychologist friend of his to train it to make it "more human."
The robot's refrain when "she" was asked something she didn't understand was: "Does not compute." Before Lost in Space, even.
You can watch snippets and read some history here.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Too Funny Not to Share
Found this glorious mashup via ffffound.com: Alice in Wonderland (the Disney version) provides an interpretation of most major illicit substances (save for the truly, literally drunk doormouse, oddly).
Found this glorious mashup via ffffound.com: Alice in Wonderland (the Disney version) provides an interpretation of most major illicit substances (save for the truly, literally drunk doormouse, oddly).
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Guilty guilty guilty pleasure and source of deep shame
One of my favorite things to do on the weekends, especially after a long week at work dealing with small-minded, mean-spirited f-tards, is early in the morning before the troops descend the stairs and start requesting waffles and cartoons I go to TED and watch a couple vids. One of my favorites is J.J. Abrams'.
It was there I saw Christopher Poole (aka "moot") who created 4chan.org, a message board where everyone is anonymous. His talk is about anonymity on the web.
Apparently, I was one of the last people on the internets to be made aware of 4chan. Back when I was a regular visitor to http://attuworld.com/, I would often wonder where the message board jokes came from and why everyone seemed to get the "in" jokes. Now I know.
I should tell you right away (if you don't already know) the controversy of 4chan.org is that, while it is moderated, really egregious and illegal stuff, such as child pr0n, sometimes make it into a post before the moderators can delete it. While usually I have been able to tell by the thumbnails that something might be that, and therefore avoid it, some piece of trash managed to post a larger picture that I encountered recently. At least when I went to report it (the folks who use 4chan are pretty good at alerting the moderators to that kind of crap, and they've made it easy), it was already deleted by the time I hit the report button.
The other obvious feature of 4chan that you may not like is it is stacked to the rafters with pr0n. The majority of the audience is teenage boys, and their sexual frustration is literally sprayed all over the walls. However, the boards are color-coded to indicate where you'll encounter adult content for sure. Pinkish/salmon colors mean there be dragons, baby blue means it's mostly safe.
Oh, and racism and sexism is pretty rampant, too, on the "adult" boards. I strongly recommend you avoid the gore threads. Do not go to 4chan to feel good about yourself. Go there to watch wild packs of humanity howl at the moon and get a laugh or two.
If you go there, it is really worth your time to read the Rules and FAQ first. That will demystify a lot of stuff right away. As with all cultures, on-line and real, there are societal rules that they take very seriously. For instance, the primary goal of 4chan is original content, and outside of preventing illegal stuff, all other social conventions flow from that. The wiki page has some nice history and additional warnings on 4chan.
One of my favorite rules is regarding the /lit/ channel, which is devoted to discussing books and getting critiques of your writing. The primary rule is no Ayn Rand discussions. So of course, some days, every other post is that. (This is known as "trolling" on 4chan.) As in real life, just ignore what you don't want.
One of my favorite forms of humor found there is "verticals" where someone has taken screen shots from movie stills and made a comic strip from them. Again, a warning: the humor in verticals is so politically incorrect, I have laughed in spite of myself out sheer shock over how mean or horrid a joke is.
Here's an example I just put together. It's not as toxic as they usually are, but it'll help you get the idea. Also, I haven't posted it yet - one has to wait for the correct circumstance to arise - so try not to steal it. (Note, had I made that request on 4chan itself, the response would have been swift and vicious.)
If you don't know the reference, grab the song here.
One of my favorite things to do on the weekends, especially after a long week at work dealing with small-minded, mean-spirited f-tards, is early in the morning before the troops descend the stairs and start requesting waffles and cartoons I go to TED and watch a couple vids. One of my favorites is J.J. Abrams'.
It was there I saw Christopher Poole (aka "moot") who created 4chan.org, a message board where everyone is anonymous. His talk is about anonymity on the web.
Apparently, I was one of the last people on the internets to be made aware of 4chan. Back when I was a regular visitor to http://attuworld.com/, I would often wonder where the message board jokes came from and why everyone seemed to get the "in" jokes. Now I know.
I should tell you right away (if you don't already know) the controversy of 4chan.org is that, while it is moderated, really egregious and illegal stuff, such as child pr0n, sometimes make it into a post before the moderators can delete it. While usually I have been able to tell by the thumbnails that something might be that, and therefore avoid it, some piece of trash managed to post a larger picture that I encountered recently. At least when I went to report it (the folks who use 4chan are pretty good at alerting the moderators to that kind of crap, and they've made it easy), it was already deleted by the time I hit the report button.
The other obvious feature of 4chan that you may not like is it is stacked to the rafters with pr0n. The majority of the audience is teenage boys, and their sexual frustration is literally sprayed all over the walls. However, the boards are color-coded to indicate where you'll encounter adult content for sure. Pinkish/salmon colors mean there be dragons, baby blue means it's mostly safe.
Oh, and racism and sexism is pretty rampant, too, on the "adult" boards. I strongly recommend you avoid the gore threads. Do not go to 4chan to feel good about yourself. Go there to watch wild packs of humanity howl at the moon and get a laugh or two.
If you go there, it is really worth your time to read the Rules and FAQ first. That will demystify a lot of stuff right away. As with all cultures, on-line and real, there are societal rules that they take very seriously. For instance, the primary goal of 4chan is original content, and outside of preventing illegal stuff, all other social conventions flow from that. The wiki page has some nice history and additional warnings on 4chan.
One of my favorite rules is regarding the /lit/ channel, which is devoted to discussing books and getting critiques of your writing. The primary rule is no Ayn Rand discussions. So of course, some days, every other post is that. (This is known as "trolling" on 4chan.) As in real life, just ignore what you don't want.
One of my favorite forms of humor found there is "verticals" where someone has taken screen shots from movie stills and made a comic strip from them. Again, a warning: the humor in verticals is so politically incorrect, I have laughed in spite of myself out sheer shock over how mean or horrid a joke is.
Here's an example I just put together. It's not as toxic as they usually are, but it'll help you get the idea. Also, I haven't posted it yet - one has to wait for the correct circumstance to arise - so try not to steal it. (Note, had I made that request on 4chan itself, the response would have been swift and vicious.)
If you don't know the reference, grab the song here.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Ephemera and Chuckles - dateline 02-18-2011
In the "What a world! What a world!" category (from the dying screams of the Wicked Witch of the West), I found a couple head-scratchers on Slashdot.org recently.
As an advertising stunt, Samsung glued their memory chips unto a bunch of paper airplanes and put them into a weather balloon to disperse them at a high altitude; instructions on the planes ask that if you find one, tell them where. The point was to illustrate how tough the chips are.
The official site is here.
This article has way more funny things to say about it than I could, so go read it if you're intrigued.
I am just amazed how far some of those little flockers flew.
Some lunkheads - who were possibly jealous that someone else thought of plasticising human carcasses and posing them in action poses and presenting "exploded views" of parts of their anatomy, or cutting animals into sections and placing them in large glass tanks so you could walk between them - have created "artistic" furniture that eats bugs and kills mice, and then generates power from the "microbio fuel." (What a clean little term that is: microbio fuel. I think I'll use that next time someone asks me what hotdogs are made of.)
While the lamps that snack on flies strike me as almost whimsical (part of me is saddened that there may be fewer bug-zappers in the world to deliver that glorious "ffrrrztzztCRACK!" sound when another pest is atomized), the table that lures mice ONTO IT to grind them up like little mouseburgers and deposit the resulting mash into the biofuel cells, hits me wrong in so many ways.
I will say that I think these creepy forms of art - plastic bodies, preserved sectioned animals, and carnivorous furniture - are essentially a public service as the guys (and they're all guys) are channeling their odd fascinations into socially "safe" activities, because I'm convinced they would being doing these projects ANYWAY, and since they're doing it on volunteers (save for the animals), all the better.
Of the many things that bother me about this table, two of my big ones are:
1) Why can't the mousetrap hole be on the corner of the table where the mouse funnel ends? (Like a pool table.) And/or why can't the mouse path just go right to the "digestion" device? Why let the filthy little nugget get on the table in the first place? The videos claim that the design is meant to cater to our morbid voyeuristic nature, the same one we use when we watch shows like "Survivor" or "Wife Swap." If so, wouldn't it be just as much fun to see the mouse drop into the hole on the corner of the table as it would in the middle? Not that I could ever get past the fact that I knew vermin had walked on the table and that they were rotting in the digestion mechanism.
2) What in hell does a table need power for? It's a table. Tables just stand there. Once they're made, we are at the end of the energy required to allow them to perform their function. A little research shows that the power is needed to run the little trapdoor and the grinding device; that's it.
The videos mention the word aesthetics a few times, which amuses me. Leaving aside the biological function of the table, take a look at the one leg that has the Habitrail tunnel in it. The other legs are the standard cheapo aluminum pegs while the tunnel leg is encased in luxurious wood (assuming, here).
Is there a single designer on the planet who wouldn't feel the need to puke in the mouse hole after encountering such a monstrosity?
From a pragmatic perspective, the few times I've had a rodent problem, there's been only one time I actually saw the creature before I caught it, which leads me to think that the possibility of a mouse strutting across the top of the table and into the eye of doom while I'm actually observing the table are equivalent to a tea-bagging party member cogently expressing an economic policy that would actually work.
Apparently none of these guys have wives or children. All of the ladies in my house express sympathy and grief every time I make the trip to the outdoor trash with a mouse adhered to one of those wonderful glue pads that drug them into a coma once they're firmly stuck. I can't begin to imagine the reaction I'd have to endure if a mouse plopped into the hole to eternity in front of us and we heard the rotors growl through their gristly task (assuming the mere appearance of the mouse didn't result in screaming and a trail of overturned furniture demarking the various escape routes).
Finally, intuition tells me that the little chewing mechanism doesn't have a reliable means of determining the difference between hapless Micky and a handful of tiny fingers. Wouldn't that likely result in a lovely cocktail discussion? "So, Fred, how come little Melissa is missing the fingers of her right hand?" "Well, y'see, we have this coffee table...."
Uh, yeah.
My wife and I often marvel at the names of most modern movies. They are so generic and innocuous that you can't remember what you wanted to catch on DVD when they finally come out.
Here's a test: what's the name of the Harrison Ford movie from 2010 that also starred Diane Keaton and Rachel McAdams? I bet you have to Google it.
Serendipitously, Salon.com has an article on how movies are named.
Do you suppose this guy's opinion was designed by committee?
I couldn't think of a single movie title I found offensive, alienating, or off-putting, so Googled for offensive movie names, finding this site (whose creator lists movies he thinks sound like you're taking a dump). Going through it, I found only one - "Scent of a Woman" - that at the time everyone I knew made the obvious observation (to wit: you're not thinking of perfume, I bet), which is about the only one that strikes me as one that anyone could possibly construe as slightly offensive or off-putting, though I don't.
So, apparently the accepted marketing wisdom in Hollywood is: in attempt to not be offensive, you name your expensive product with a name so vanilla no one can remember it. That explains a lot. 8-)
TLD: Just before posting this, I thought of a movie title that was potentially problematic: "Zach and Miri Make a Porno." It would only a problem if I ended up having to explain it to my kids. But the TV stations wouldn't allow the full name to be said or displayed, so it never came up.
Finally, I have yet again misunderstood the lyrics to a song.
Goldfrapp's new tune "Rocket" has this seemingly sweet chorus:
At first blush, it seems like a love song. But when you listen to the set up (which I obviously didn't the first few times through), it's not that at all:
My interpretation is she's taken the Wile E. Coyote solution to a boyfriend who had a tryst with the other woman from a previous threesome without inclusion or permission.
So, apparently, if the song is about a threesome, I don't get the memo until after repeated listenings.
The end of the song makes me chuckle every time, now:
In the "What a world! What a world!" category (from the dying screams of the Wicked Witch of the West), I found a couple head-scratchers on Slashdot.org recently.
As an advertising stunt, Samsung glued their memory chips unto a bunch of paper airplanes and put them into a weather balloon to disperse them at a high altitude; instructions on the planes ask that if you find one, tell them where. The point was to illustrate how tough the chips are.
The official site is here.
This article has way more funny things to say about it than I could, so go read it if you're intrigued.
I am just amazed how far some of those little flockers flew.
Some lunkheads - who were possibly jealous that someone else thought of plasticising human carcasses and posing them in action poses and presenting "exploded views" of parts of their anatomy, or cutting animals into sections and placing them in large glass tanks so you could walk between them - have created "artistic" furniture that eats bugs and kills mice, and then generates power from the "microbio fuel." (What a clean little term that is: microbio fuel. I think I'll use that next time someone asks me what hotdogs are made of.)
While the lamps that snack on flies strike me as almost whimsical (part of me is saddened that there may be fewer bug-zappers in the world to deliver that glorious "ffrrrztzztCRACK!" sound when another pest is atomized), the table that lures mice ONTO IT to grind them up like little mouseburgers and deposit the resulting mash into the biofuel cells, hits me wrong in so many ways.
I will say that I think these creepy forms of art - plastic bodies, preserved sectioned animals, and carnivorous furniture - are essentially a public service as the guys (and they're all guys) are channeling their odd fascinations into socially "safe" activities, because I'm convinced they would being doing these projects ANYWAY, and since they're doing it on volunteers (save for the animals), all the better.
Of the many things that bother me about this table, two of my big ones are:
1) Why can't the mousetrap hole be on the corner of the table where the mouse funnel ends? (Like a pool table.) And/or why can't the mouse path just go right to the "digestion" device? Why let the filthy little nugget get on the table in the first place? The videos claim that the design is meant to cater to our morbid voyeuristic nature, the same one we use when we watch shows like "Survivor" or "Wife Swap." If so, wouldn't it be just as much fun to see the mouse drop into the hole on the corner of the table as it would in the middle? Not that I could ever get past the fact that I knew vermin had walked on the table and that they were rotting in the digestion mechanism.
2) What in hell does a table need power for? It's a table. Tables just stand there. Once they're made, we are at the end of the energy required to allow them to perform their function. A little research shows that the power is needed to run the little trapdoor and the grinding device; that's it.
The videos mention the word aesthetics a few times, which amuses me. Leaving aside the biological function of the table, take a look at the one leg that has the Habitrail tunnel in it. The other legs are the standard cheapo aluminum pegs while the tunnel leg is encased in luxurious wood (assuming, here).
Is there a single designer on the planet who wouldn't feel the need to puke in the mouse hole after encountering such a monstrosity?
From a pragmatic perspective, the few times I've had a rodent problem, there's been only one time I actually saw the creature before I caught it, which leads me to think that the possibility of a mouse strutting across the top of the table and into the eye of doom while I'm actually observing the table are equivalent to a tea-bagging party member cogently expressing an economic policy that would actually work.
Apparently none of these guys have wives or children. All of the ladies in my house express sympathy and grief every time I make the trip to the outdoor trash with a mouse adhered to one of those wonderful glue pads that drug them into a coma once they're firmly stuck. I can't begin to imagine the reaction I'd have to endure if a mouse plopped into the hole to eternity in front of us and we heard the rotors growl through their gristly task (assuming the mere appearance of the mouse didn't result in screaming and a trail of overturned furniture demarking the various escape routes).
Finally, intuition tells me that the little chewing mechanism doesn't have a reliable means of determining the difference between hapless Micky and a handful of tiny fingers. Wouldn't that likely result in a lovely cocktail discussion? "So, Fred, how come little Melissa is missing the fingers of her right hand?" "Well, y'see, we have this coffee table...."
Uh, yeah.
My wife and I often marvel at the names of most modern movies. They are so generic and innocuous that you can't remember what you wanted to catch on DVD when they finally come out.
Here's a test: what's the name of the Harrison Ford movie from 2010 that also starred Diane Keaton and Rachel McAdams? I bet you have to Google it.
Serendipitously, Salon.com has an article on how movies are named.
Is ["Just Go with It"] the freshest title in the world? Probably not, but what's good about it -- and this is true of most all romantic comedies -- is that it's inherently optimistic even as it promises some kind of conflict. You want a complication that isn't going to turn people off. It's not that these titles are purposefully vague so much as they're trying to sound as neutral as possible not to alienate audiences. That's why so many are derived from common expressions or aphorisms. "Something's Gotta Give," "It's Complicated," titles like that.
Do you suppose this guy's opinion was designed by committee?
I couldn't think of a single movie title I found offensive, alienating, or off-putting, so Googled for offensive movie names, finding this site (whose creator lists movies he thinks sound like you're taking a dump). Going through it, I found only one - "Scent of a Woman" - that at the time everyone I knew made the obvious observation (to wit: you're not thinking of perfume, I bet), which is about the only one that strikes me as one that anyone could possibly construe as slightly offensive or off-putting, though I don't.
So, apparently the accepted marketing wisdom in Hollywood is: in attempt to not be offensive, you name your expensive product with a name so vanilla no one can remember it. That explains a lot. 8-)
TLD: Just before posting this, I thought of a movie title that was potentially problematic: "Zach and Miri Make a Porno." It would only a problem if I ended up having to explain it to my kids. But the TV stations wouldn't allow the full name to be said or displayed, so it never came up.
Finally, I have yet again misunderstood the lyrics to a song.
Goldfrapp's new tune "Rocket" has this seemingly sweet chorus:
Oh-oh-oh
I got a rocket
Oh-oh-oh
You're going on it
Oh-oh-oh
You're never coming back
At first blush, it seems like a love song. But when you listen to the set up (which I obviously didn't the first few times through), it's not that at all:
Starting something
Thought it could be fun
I started something
Couldn't go wrong
Danger, heartache
I always knew there's no winner
In this game you lose
But I still wanna know how she got in the door uninvited?
[chorus]
This is secret
Stories unfold
Fooled by pleasure
Losing control
Danger, heartache
Something has died
No good pretending
I'm leaving this time
But I still wanna know how she got in the door uninvited?
My interpretation is she's taken the Wile E. Coyote solution to a boyfriend who had a tryst with the other woman from a previous threesome without inclusion or permission.
So, apparently, if the song is about a threesome, I don't get the memo until after repeated listenings.
The end of the song makes me chuckle every time, now:
5-4-3-2-1...
We have lift off.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Well, halloooo!
Talk about blogger's block, oy!
I have been pecking around on pieces of posts these two whole months, but nothing gelled. Hopefully I can salvage something from them, but they may be some of those proverbial babies you have to kill.
What tripped me up were Whoopi Goldberg, Phil Collins, Gerry Rafferty, and an attempt at a "best of 2010" which, to quote band Drivin' and Cryin' that has since faded waaaay into obscurity, "It started out as poetry and turned into a scream," not that I'm claiming anything I write approaches poetry.
I can't scrape enough of anything to compile any sort of best of 2010 post. I've already mentioned the few things I've enjoyed in other posts (Cee-Lo and Mellencamp, if you're wondering), and it seems redundant to try to blog about them again. 2010 was kinda vapid, arts-wise.
The main thing that got stuck in my craw was a chapter of Whoopi Goldberg's advice/rant book Is It Just Me?: Or is it nuts out there?, entitled "Bloggers are Cowards," found on pages 139 and 140 (and if you search on those words on the LOOK INSIDE! feature, you'll be able to read enough to glean most of her opinion).
Since I blog in (relative) anonymity and I often take swipes at books/movies/music I don't like, I took exception to her charge.
I thought: "YOU'RE SO FULL OF …!!!" "WELL, I NEVER! [sputter!]" "...maybe you have a point." "{sigh}"
I had to think about it for a while.
For example, I was still feeling squishy about my dis of Emma Donoghue's Room (though on review, it's pretty tame and adheres to my rule about not saying anything I wouldn't say to the person's face). Yet, my emotional reaction was based on my accidentally encountering two "child in peril" entertainments at the same time. (The other being Shutter Island.) I still stand by my review(s), but that is a button of mine.
But, there I was (am?), hiding behind a pseudonym and taking shots at something someone had spent months and maybe years of their life working on. Then again, that's the whole review model established and embraced by Amazon and its many clones.
To be fair, Whoopi was specifically talking about the Perez Hiltons of the world who egregiously extend the already grotesque paparazzi stalking model and snipe about celebrities' personal lives and post pictures of them sneezing or scratching their ass. But, her words do indict any and all anonymous bloggers.
So I had to think about that.
Then, there was this heartbreaking article about Phil Collins in the November 2010 Rolling Stone. In summary, all of the criticism leveled at Phil, particularly when he was ubiquitous on the radio, eventually took their toll. He reportedly feels depressed, has thoughts about suicide, and generally feels like a failure. (If you're interested, you should hunt down and read the whole thing; the bullet points are available here.)
I mean, holy shit, if you experience a level of success so extreme you enter that rare pantheon of artists reviled largely for their media saturation and not the quality of their work - a list that includes Bee Gees and Micheal Jackson, and arguably Elvis Presley - that's a form of back-handed praise. It's deeply saddening to me that someone can experience that kind of universal success and acceptance and come away thinking it was a bad thing.
And what does that say about fulfillment and happiness? Yes, yes, those don't necessarily come from tangible things, but still, you'd think having practically everyone on the planet think (at some point) that your artistic offerings are nifty would a least fill those holes a little.
To top it all off, the (very recently) late, great Gerry Rafferty died due to complications from alcoholism. While his beautiful and well-loved classic "Baker Street" is not what anyone would label as shiny happy puppy time, the song from the same album, "Whatever's Written in Your Heart," articulates a moving vision of hope after an intense sadness. It never fails to lift my soul. To think Rafferty died from what could be argued as endemic sadness is daunting.
To the topic at hand, all those critical daggers seem to find their targets. Maybe negative commentary doesn't have a place in the world when lives aren't at stake.
Though I'm torn, because I rely as much on the negative reviews on Amazon as I do the positive. It's pretty easy to discern if someone positing a negative review means it, or if they're just ignorant or a crank. If I agree with a well-reasoned dismissal, particularly if it's something that I'd dislike about it as well, I steer clear.
But then, outside of my buttons - child in peril, incest, wingnuttery, and gratuitous adultery (lit fic, I'm looking at you) - maybe I need to just give those books/movies/music a chance. I might find something I dig that otherwise I'd miss just because someone else had gas on the day they encountered it.
I think Whoopi has convinced me to shut the fuck up already with the negativity. Who am I to sneer at someone's legitimate offering to the world of media/art?
I'm going to try to either not blog about books/movies/music I didn't like, or I'm going to try to find a way to articulate my thoughts on them without saying anything the artist wouldn't necessarily disagree with - if that's possible. (For instance, make it about me and/or my limitations or prejudices rather than the merits of the work.)
I guess we'll see. Call it a New Year's resolution.
Talk about blogger's block, oy!
I have been pecking around on pieces of posts these two whole months, but nothing gelled. Hopefully I can salvage something from them, but they may be some of those proverbial babies you have to kill.
What tripped me up were Whoopi Goldberg, Phil Collins, Gerry Rafferty, and an attempt at a "best of 2010" which, to quote band Drivin' and Cryin' that has since faded waaaay into obscurity, "It started out as poetry and turned into a scream," not that I'm claiming anything I write approaches poetry.
I can't scrape enough of anything to compile any sort of best of 2010 post. I've already mentioned the few things I've enjoyed in other posts (Cee-Lo and Mellencamp, if you're wondering), and it seems redundant to try to blog about them again. 2010 was kinda vapid, arts-wise.
The main thing that got stuck in my craw was a chapter of Whoopi Goldberg's advice/rant book Is It Just Me?: Or is it nuts out there?, entitled "Bloggers are Cowards," found on pages 139 and 140 (and if you search on those words on the LOOK INSIDE! feature, you'll be able to read enough to glean most of her opinion).
Since I blog in (relative) anonymity and I often take swipes at books/movies/music I don't like, I took exception to her charge.
I thought: "YOU'RE SO FULL OF …!!!" "WELL, I NEVER! [sputter!]" "...maybe you have a point." "{sigh}"
I had to think about it for a while.
For example, I was still feeling squishy about my dis of Emma Donoghue's Room (though on review, it's pretty tame and adheres to my rule about not saying anything I wouldn't say to the person's face). Yet, my emotional reaction was based on my accidentally encountering two "child in peril" entertainments at the same time. (The other being Shutter Island.) I still stand by my review(s), but that is a button of mine.
But, there I was (am?), hiding behind a pseudonym and taking shots at something someone had spent months and maybe years of their life working on. Then again, that's the whole review model established and embraced by Amazon and its many clones.
To be fair, Whoopi was specifically talking about the Perez Hiltons of the world who egregiously extend the already grotesque paparazzi stalking model and snipe about celebrities' personal lives and post pictures of them sneezing or scratching their ass. But, her words do indict any and all anonymous bloggers.
So I had to think about that.
Then, there was this heartbreaking article about Phil Collins in the November 2010 Rolling Stone. In summary, all of the criticism leveled at Phil, particularly when he was ubiquitous on the radio, eventually took their toll. He reportedly feels depressed, has thoughts about suicide, and generally feels like a failure. (If you're interested, you should hunt down and read the whole thing; the bullet points are available here.)
I mean, holy shit, if you experience a level of success so extreme you enter that rare pantheon of artists reviled largely for their media saturation and not the quality of their work - a list that includes Bee Gees and Micheal Jackson, and arguably Elvis Presley - that's a form of back-handed praise. It's deeply saddening to me that someone can experience that kind of universal success and acceptance and come away thinking it was a bad thing.
And what does that say about fulfillment and happiness? Yes, yes, those don't necessarily come from tangible things, but still, you'd think having practically everyone on the planet think (at some point) that your artistic offerings are nifty would a least fill those holes a little.
To top it all off, the (very recently) late, great Gerry Rafferty died due to complications from alcoholism. While his beautiful and well-loved classic "Baker Street" is not what anyone would label as shiny happy puppy time, the song from the same album, "Whatever's Written in Your Heart," articulates a moving vision of hope after an intense sadness. It never fails to lift my soul. To think Rafferty died from what could be argued as endemic sadness is daunting.
To the topic at hand, all those critical daggers seem to find their targets. Maybe negative commentary doesn't have a place in the world when lives aren't at stake.
Though I'm torn, because I rely as much on the negative reviews on Amazon as I do the positive. It's pretty easy to discern if someone positing a negative review means it, or if they're just ignorant or a crank. If I agree with a well-reasoned dismissal, particularly if it's something that I'd dislike about it as well, I steer clear.
But then, outside of my buttons - child in peril, incest, wingnuttery, and gratuitous adultery (lit fic, I'm looking at you) - maybe I need to just give those books/movies/music a chance. I might find something I dig that otherwise I'd miss just because someone else had gas on the day they encountered it.
I think Whoopi has convinced me to shut the fuck up already with the negativity. Who am I to sneer at someone's legitimate offering to the world of media/art?
I'm going to try to either not blog about books/movies/music I didn't like, or I'm going to try to find a way to articulate my thoughts on them without saying anything the artist wouldn't necessarily disagree with - if that's possible. (For instance, make it about me and/or my limitations or prejudices rather than the merits of the work.)
I guess we'll see. Call it a New Year's resolution.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Bad behavior on goodreads
Recently experimented with a social network site that seemed designed just for someone like me: goodreads (yes, all lowercase). You review books, indicate what you've read, are reading, will read, and "friend" people who are either real friends, or strangers who have similar tastes, presumably to garner ideas on what to read next.
Since my post on my distrust of social network sites (which seems to be justified regularly), I've felt like I've needed to keep my eye open for some that don't proffer the usual offenses.
Alas, last night after I logged-in, goodreads did the very thing I don't like - it hit me with a login-like screen whose general message and intent was: "hey, you probably have email accounts and other social networking accounts like twitter - let's knit them all together!"
Uh, f@ck no. I just wanna piddle around with fellow avid readers, not present my web presence to the marketing behemoths at large.
Now I realize that by being online at all and creating accounts - particularly with the same moniker: "yahmdallah" - I have in a de facto sense made my online doings very trackable. Without much work, you can even find my real name. But, to me, that's not the same thing as just granting some corporate site permission to extend its tentacles into all of my online activity and grouping the websites I use. Maybe I'm kidding myself about my level of non-involvement in the corporate drive to glean all they can about me (thinking about cookies, here, which I don't nuke as regularly as I should). I'm not technically knowledgeable enough to be able to make a determination with any confidence, but if I don't let them associate all my accounts for them, I'm hoping they can only guess what's mine and what isn't.
Anyway, I deleted my account on the spot.
I was toying with that idea anyway because keeping the site up-to-date on my reading felt a LOT like homework. It did point out to me what a voracious and varied reader I really am. I've always known this, but I recorded only half of the books I actually picked up and perused when my account was live. I hit the library several times a week, and almost always walk out with a couple new ones. For the couple weeks my account was active, I'd be in the middle of a book and think "oh, I should put this on my 'currently reading' shelf on goodreads," but almost always choose to just keep reading, and I'd forget to do it later.
When I would pull up the site, I would glance over at my pile of books and think I should input the titles, but there, too, I preferred to keep on doing what I was already doing (surfing), and blew it off.
Oddly, I began to feel a tinge of guilt about this. Which is absurd as I owed no obligation to anyone in that regard.
Once I realized that, I realized that I had enjoyed putting together the list of books I'd read, but the fun had ended there. I crested at over 400 books, and that's just what I could remember the night I signed up. That was fun, and reminded me of when I worked in a bookstore, where a couple times when I was bored out of my gourd and had finished the unbelievable amount of busywork that the chain foisted upon its just above minimum wage slaves, so I went around the store and pulled out about an inch every book I'd read, just to see (this was something I was taught to do when we had to do book counts for inventory and such, as the customer doesn't know why the book is pulled forward about an inch, they usually leave it alone, and you can still see what's on the shelf). Even with a Lit degree, I hadn't expected to be as well-read or current as I was at the time. It felt good.
And it felt good to see over 400 books I had read in one place.
But there I was in the end, feeling like I had not done my homework, and it wanted to amass marketing material on my ass, at my expense. (I could already imagine the new waves of spam and "Hey, since you're interested in this, why don't you buy that?" kind of shite.)
Thus, I discovered the only other pleasant thing about goodreads: it allows you to delete your account with two clicks.
Nice.
(Apologies to anyone I "friended" for leaving so abruptly.)
Recently experimented with a social network site that seemed designed just for someone like me: goodreads (yes, all lowercase). You review books, indicate what you've read, are reading, will read, and "friend" people who are either real friends, or strangers who have similar tastes, presumably to garner ideas on what to read next.
Since my post on my distrust of social network sites (which seems to be justified regularly), I've felt like I've needed to keep my eye open for some that don't proffer the usual offenses.
Alas, last night after I logged-in, goodreads did the very thing I don't like - it hit me with a login-like screen whose general message and intent was: "hey, you probably have email accounts and other social networking accounts like twitter - let's knit them all together!"
Uh, f@ck no. I just wanna piddle around with fellow avid readers, not present my web presence to the marketing behemoths at large.
Now I realize that by being online at all and creating accounts - particularly with the same moniker: "yahmdallah" - I have in a de facto sense made my online doings very trackable. Without much work, you can even find my real name. But, to me, that's not the same thing as just granting some corporate site permission to extend its tentacles into all of my online activity and grouping the websites I use. Maybe I'm kidding myself about my level of non-involvement in the corporate drive to glean all they can about me (thinking about cookies, here, which I don't nuke as regularly as I should). I'm not technically knowledgeable enough to be able to make a determination with any confidence, but if I don't let them associate all my accounts for them, I'm hoping they can only guess what's mine and what isn't.
Anyway, I deleted my account on the spot.
I was toying with that idea anyway because keeping the site up-to-date on my reading felt a LOT like homework. It did point out to me what a voracious and varied reader I really am. I've always known this, but I recorded only half of the books I actually picked up and perused when my account was live. I hit the library several times a week, and almost always walk out with a couple new ones. For the couple weeks my account was active, I'd be in the middle of a book and think "oh, I should put this on my 'currently reading' shelf on goodreads," but almost always choose to just keep reading, and I'd forget to do it later.
When I would pull up the site, I would glance over at my pile of books and think I should input the titles, but there, too, I preferred to keep on doing what I was already doing (surfing), and blew it off.
Oddly, I began to feel a tinge of guilt about this. Which is absurd as I owed no obligation to anyone in that regard.
Once I realized that, I realized that I had enjoyed putting together the list of books I'd read, but the fun had ended there. I crested at over 400 books, and that's just what I could remember the night I signed up. That was fun, and reminded me of when I worked in a bookstore, where a couple times when I was bored out of my gourd and had finished the unbelievable amount of busywork that the chain foisted upon its just above minimum wage slaves, so I went around the store and pulled out about an inch every book I'd read, just to see (this was something I was taught to do when we had to do book counts for inventory and such, as the customer doesn't know why the book is pulled forward about an inch, they usually leave it alone, and you can still see what's on the shelf). Even with a Lit degree, I hadn't expected to be as well-read or current as I was at the time. It felt good.
And it felt good to see over 400 books I had read in one place.
But there I was in the end, feeling like I had not done my homework, and it wanted to amass marketing material on my ass, at my expense. (I could already imagine the new waves of spam and "Hey, since you're interested in this, why don't you buy that?" kind of shite.)
Thus, I discovered the only other pleasant thing about goodreads: it allows you to delete your account with two clicks.
Nice.
(Apologies to anyone I "friended" for leaving so abruptly.)
Friday, October 29, 2010
3 Songs for the Season
While trusty Whisky has been kickin' out the jams with several album recomendations lately, I've only got three single songs for ya.
But, they're pretty damned awesome, imho.
First of all is Cee-Lo Green's "Fuck You." Cee-Lo is one half of Gnarls Barkley.
Catchy and profane as hell, it makes me grin every time I hear it (alone in the car or privately on the MP3 player, this ain't one for the kids).
Shoo the kids out of the room and give it a listen. Now listen again, and near the end of the song listen to the whiny part where his mom says "This is one for your dad." I laugh hardest then.
As a companion disc to the other K-tel compilation I dreamed up, Love Songs for One, I've got start at a set of expurgated obscene songs, to be entitled later:
- "FU" by Cee Lo Green
- "F**k You" by Lily Allen
- "Crazy B*tch" by Buckcherry
- "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio" by Monty Python
My favorite song of the moment is John Mellencamp's "Save Some Time to Dream."
The song itself is just a good tune, as evidenced here by one of the many live performances you can find on the web, but this particular version from the album No Better Than This is a haunting rendition that must be heard.
The concept of the album was to record in mono on the original equipment with a live band in the various places that Elvis, Robert Johnson, and other great artists recorded some of their seminal tracks. While it's worth one good listen, I don't imagine this is one I'm going to slap into the player that often.
However, I've already played the hell out of "Save Some Time to Dream." I'm still not tired of it, and I think it's one of those I'll always come back to.
I continue to be amazed at the great songs Mellencamp is capable of writing. I look forward to everything he does now.
Finally, we have one of those songs I should be deeply deeply ashamed of for even liking (but I've never cowered from proudly declaring I like what I like, even to the extent that I "won" one of Micheal Blowhard's (aka Ray Sawhill) "I'm So Gay" competitions).
If you have daughters around the house, there is no escaping the cultural impact of the TV show "Glee." While I can't watch more than 10 minutes without feeling like I have to guzzle a beer, scratch my ass, and belch loudly enough to alarm the dogs (we have two now - a story for another day), when my daughter queued up their cover of Van Halen's "Jump," I have to admit I was charmed. (Second link here in case the first one is yoinked; however the producers of the show seem to realize the value of viral video on Youtube.)
Having the chorus sing the rhythm guitar part is inspired, but having the voices spread out in harmonization in the latter part of the "bah bah dah dum," so it sounds like the harmonicis of Eddie's guitar, is beyond brilliant.
I'm gonna have to remember when I have the windows rolled down when that one cycles up on the player in the car.
Happy Halloween everyone!
While trusty Whisky has been kickin' out the jams with several album recomendations lately, I've only got three single songs for ya.
But, they're pretty damned awesome, imho.
First of all is Cee-Lo Green's "Fuck You." Cee-Lo is one half of Gnarls Barkley.
Catchy and profane as hell, it makes me grin every time I hear it (alone in the car or privately on the MP3 player, this ain't one for the kids).
Shoo the kids out of the room and give it a listen. Now listen again, and near the end of the song listen to the whiny part where his mom says "This is one for your dad." I laugh hardest then.
As a companion disc to the other K-tel compilation I dreamed up, Love Songs for One, I've got start at a set of expurgated obscene songs, to be entitled later:
- "FU" by Cee Lo Green
- "F**k You" by Lily Allen
- "Crazy B*tch" by Buckcherry
- "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio" by Monty Python
My favorite song of the moment is John Mellencamp's "Save Some Time to Dream."
The song itself is just a good tune, as evidenced here by one of the many live performances you can find on the web, but this particular version from the album No Better Than This is a haunting rendition that must be heard.
The concept of the album was to record in mono on the original equipment with a live band in the various places that Elvis, Robert Johnson, and other great artists recorded some of their seminal tracks. While it's worth one good listen, I don't imagine this is one I'm going to slap into the player that often.
However, I've already played the hell out of "Save Some Time to Dream." I'm still not tired of it, and I think it's one of those I'll always come back to.
I continue to be amazed at the great songs Mellencamp is capable of writing. I look forward to everything he does now.
Finally, we have one of those songs I should be deeply deeply ashamed of for even liking (but I've never cowered from proudly declaring I like what I like, even to the extent that I "won" one of Micheal Blowhard's (aka Ray Sawhill) "I'm So Gay" competitions).
If you have daughters around the house, there is no escaping the cultural impact of the TV show "Glee." While I can't watch more than 10 minutes without feeling like I have to guzzle a beer, scratch my ass, and belch loudly enough to alarm the dogs (we have two now - a story for another day), when my daughter queued up their cover of Van Halen's "Jump," I have to admit I was charmed. (Second link here in case the first one is yoinked; however the producers of the show seem to realize the value of viral video on Youtube.)
Having the chorus sing the rhythm guitar part is inspired, but having the voices spread out in harmonization in the latter part of the "bah bah dah dum," so it sounds like the harmonicis of Eddie's guitar, is beyond brilliant.
I'm gonna have to remember when I have the windows rolled down when that one cycles up on the player in the car.
Happy Halloween everyone!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Entertainments while facing the void
Hey there, few readers I have left after not posting for a month!
[Three paragraphs of bitching and moaning excised. No one needs to read that shite.]
So, amongst all this, one still attempts to stave off the demons and the boredom with entertainments.
Stumbled through Lucy by Laurence Gonzales, which was festooned with some of the clumsiest writing I've come across since I've re-read some of my less-inspired posts. It also made the mistake of filling (filler) pages of description of verdant forests and vistas of unimaginable beauty, etc. Since Gonzales is such a clumsy writer, it was easy to skip most of that crap.
Which was too bad, really. The premise - a misguided scientist of the Jane Goodall stripe manages to create a human/bonobo chimp hybrid that looks mostly human - is a promising one. Alas, it pretty much apes (heh heh) the plot of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, makes the chimp-girl noble via sheer dint of her birth (why would she be better than a human just because she has bonobo genes?), and even stoops to the now-obligatory swipes at Christianity (though it was fundie Christianity being swiped at; the author had the grace to include a "good" Christian in the plot).
I wish someone would try again with this idea, and do a better job.
Tried to read Room by Emma Donoghue, and was immediately charmed by the dead-on first person narration by a five-year-old, with the funky word constructions and primitive, though logical, grammar.
Mysteriously they spend all of their time in a small room. However, SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER it turns out that they are being held captive by a kidnapper who is the (unwanted, rapist) father of the child, and in order to escape the child has to play dead in a rolled-up carpet and then jump from a moving truck. I have a child that age, and the thought of my little sweetie having to dive out of a moving car and bounce along the pavement is just too much to bear, even in print.END SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
NOT REALLY A SPOILER (as it's indicated on the cover summary): What's worse, once they escape the room, the mother's character immediately changes in a way that isn't consistent with what went before, and it's heart-rending. The child still pines for the close environment of the room and his mother's undivided attention, but once she's free, she appears to not care about the child's adjustment to the new world, and that struck me as wrong.
At that point, I skipped to the end to see how it turned out, and was glad I abandoned it when I did. I'll leave it at that.
If child-in-peril plots don't bother you, you might like the uniqueness of Room and the artistic chance Donoghue takes, but I think anyone with small kids will be put off.
On the heels of that unhappy fictional experience, I watched Shutter Island, which also eventually turned out to be another child-in-peril story. A very gruesome one at that. (Remember the moms who drowned their children? This is that on steroids.)
Even The Runaways, the bio flick about Joan Jett's first band (plus Lita Ford who I don't recall being mentioned by name in the flick which was weird, as she's the only other one who "made it") was mostly about how these young teen girls were exploited. I'd read the bio it was based on and thankfully they didn't use some of the more prurient stuff. Though I gotta admit the opening scene is audacious: menstrual blood landing on the gravel between one of the character's feet, the first line being something about what a time to get her period.
After all of this, oddly, I really liked Machete, Robert Rodriguez's latest. It's about as hyper-violent as it comes, full of everything that makes a move a hard "R", but it was damn good adult escapist entertainment. There's a scene where a nude woman removes a blackberry from the only place she could store it, replete with the sound effect of retrieving the same. I had a big chuckle with the boys afterwards about the sound tech who was instructed to come up with that sound.
So, here I sit, admitting I enjoyed a movie where the hero swings through a window a floor down - Die Hard-style - using a man's intestines more than these "serious" entertainments.
I guess I prefer bad guys getting hurt rather than babies.
And I guess I like that about myself.
Hey there, few readers I have left after not posting for a month!
[Three paragraphs of bitching and moaning excised. No one needs to read that shite.]
So, amongst all this, one still attempts to stave off the demons and the boredom with entertainments.
Stumbled through Lucy by Laurence Gonzales, which was festooned with some of the clumsiest writing I've come across since I've re-read some of my less-inspired posts. It also made the mistake of filling (filler) pages of description of verdant forests and vistas of unimaginable beauty, etc. Since Gonzales is such a clumsy writer, it was easy to skip most of that crap.
Which was too bad, really. The premise - a misguided scientist of the Jane Goodall stripe manages to create a human/bonobo chimp hybrid that looks mostly human - is a promising one. Alas, it pretty much apes (heh heh) the plot of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, makes the chimp-girl noble via sheer dint of her birth (why would she be better than a human just because she has bonobo genes?), and even stoops to the now-obligatory swipes at Christianity (though it was fundie Christianity being swiped at; the author had the grace to include a "good" Christian in the plot).
I wish someone would try again with this idea, and do a better job.
Tried to read Room by Emma Donoghue, and was immediately charmed by the dead-on first person narration by a five-year-old, with the funky word constructions and primitive, though logical, grammar.
Mysteriously they spend all of their time in a small room. However, SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER it turns out that they are being held captive by a kidnapper who is the (unwanted, rapist) father of the child, and in order to escape the child has to play dead in a rolled-up carpet and then jump from a moving truck. I have a child that age, and the thought of my little sweetie having to dive out of a moving car and bounce along the pavement is just too much to bear, even in print.END SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
NOT REALLY A SPOILER (as it's indicated on the cover summary): What's worse, once they escape the room, the mother's character immediately changes in a way that isn't consistent with what went before, and it's heart-rending. The child still pines for the close environment of the room and his mother's undivided attention, but once she's free, she appears to not care about the child's adjustment to the new world, and that struck me as wrong.
At that point, I skipped to the end to see how it turned out, and was glad I abandoned it when I did. I'll leave it at that.
If child-in-peril plots don't bother you, you might like the uniqueness of Room and the artistic chance Donoghue takes, but I think anyone with small kids will be put off.
TLD: This goes against Ebert's dictum that you should review the thing you saw (or read) not what you wanted to see (or read), but since a few folks in the Amazon reviews mentioned it, I thought I would too, because I had the very same thought while reading Room: this would have been excellent as a short-form fiction - a novelette or short story. (Especially if the "escape" portion of the story would've been less harrowing.)
Works that have a strong, highly-stylized first person narrative that conveys specific character or mental traits are usually better in short form. For example both Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and Born of Man and Woman are wonderful short stories with a great sucker-punch. (Those are links to the actual stories, and if you haven't read either, you've got a treat or two in store for you.) Flowers for Algernon is unique in that the author expanded the short story into novel form later. I've read both, and while I consider the novel a success, I prefer the short story as it delivers most of the same material in a tighter package, which makes the ending more visceral, in my opinion.
Thus, it'd be interesting to see Donoghue pare Room down to a short story. If you read this, Ms. Donoghue, and aren't too pissed at me for not completely enjoying your book, consider giving it a try.
On the heels of that unhappy fictional experience, I watched Shutter Island, which also eventually turned out to be another child-in-peril story. A very gruesome one at that. (Remember the moms who drowned their children? This is that on steroids.)
Even The Runaways, the bio flick about Joan Jett's first band (plus Lita Ford who I don't recall being mentioned by name in the flick which was weird, as she's the only other one who "made it") was mostly about how these young teen girls were exploited. I'd read the bio it was based on and thankfully they didn't use some of the more prurient stuff. Though I gotta admit the opening scene is audacious: menstrual blood landing on the gravel between one of the character's feet, the first line being something about what a time to get her period.
After all of this, oddly, I really liked Machete, Robert Rodriguez's latest. It's about as hyper-violent as it comes, full of everything that makes a move a hard "R", but it was damn good adult escapist entertainment. There's a scene where a nude woman removes a blackberry from the only place she could store it, replete with the sound effect of retrieving the same. I had a big chuckle with the boys afterwards about the sound tech who was instructed to come up with that sound.
So, here I sit, admitting I enjoyed a movie where the hero swings through a window a floor down - Die Hard-style - using a man's intestines more than these "serious" entertainments.
I guess I prefer bad guys getting hurt rather than babies.
And I guess I like that about myself.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The Year the Music Died
In Whisky's post "Album Of The Year," the comments veered into a discussion of when popular music - the charts, radio, etc. - lost their appeal for them. (I began to craft a simple answer for the comments, but my researching for it morphed it into a post.)
I've always known I'd had "that moment of egress from the larger gestalt," but until now, I didn't really try to pin-point it. Now I have: 1989 was the year the music died for me. The last year the charts and radio were truly relevant to me was 1988.
Reviewing the charts, there were a handful of songs I liked in 1988, which speaks to my probably still buying albums regularly and such, but it was a pretty weak year, nonetheless. Here's a sample of songs I liked at the time:
INXS - Need You Tonight
George Harrison - Got My Mind Set on You
Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up - interesting that the famous internet meme song came out this year
Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine
Steve Winwood - Roll With It
Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry, Be Happy
Beach Boys - Kokomo
Tracy Chapman - Fast Car
Van Halen - When It's Love
Sting - We'll Be Together
Joan Jett - I Hate Myself for Loving You
John Cougar Mellencamp - Cherry Bomb
(I also realized that when I came across Whitney Houston's "So Emotional" in the 1988 hits list that it was the year I got my wisdom teeth removed. Irony? Fate? Synchronicity?)
The few songs I did like from 1989 all seem to be named appropriately, given it was my year of abandonment:
Boy Meets Girl - Waiting For a Star to Fall
Mike + the Mechanics - The Living Years
38 Special - Second Chance
Don Henley - The End of the Innocence
1989 marked the beginning of the invasion of the metal hair bands, "Dance/Hip Hop" (which was really just disco remonikered), Bon Jovi, and other abominations, which was main reason I stopped listening. Public taste had changed from mine.
That was also the year I relented and stopped buying vinyl and moved to CD exclusively. The trigger was Tom Petty's "Full Moon Fever." It was the last vinyl I bought because MCA had always had shitty prints (they usually came with a side of bacon), but that particular print sounded like it was already two decades old. I took it back to the store and they let me exchange it for the CD.
After that, the rare awesome album came along. Here's the mostly complete list:
U2 - Achtung Baby - 1991
Nirvana - Nevermind - 1991
Spin Doctors - Pocket Full of Kryptonite - 1991
Faith No More - Angel Dust - 1992
Dave Matthews Band - Under the Table and Dreaming - 1994
Live - Throwing Copper - 1994
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill - 1995
The Refreshments - Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy - 1996
No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom - 1996
There was a blip in 1996 when a rash of good songs were released (Collective Soul, Oasis, and the Gin Blossoms were gaining prominence then), but other than that, I tend to buy the artists I already like: Prince, The Cure, Collective Soul, U2, DMB, The Foo Fighters, and Dwight Yoakam.
The only memorable new artist added to my cannon was The Flaming Lips when they bombed the world with "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" in 2002.
In Whisky's post "Album Of The Year," the comments veered into a discussion of when popular music - the charts, radio, etc. - lost their appeal for them. (I began to craft a simple answer for the comments, but my researching for it morphed it into a post.)
I've always known I'd had "that moment of egress from the larger gestalt," but until now, I didn't really try to pin-point it. Now I have: 1989 was the year the music died for me. The last year the charts and radio were truly relevant to me was 1988.
Reviewing the charts, there were a handful of songs I liked in 1988, which speaks to my probably still buying albums regularly and such, but it was a pretty weak year, nonetheless. Here's a sample of songs I liked at the time:
INXS - Need You Tonight
George Harrison - Got My Mind Set on You
Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up - interesting that the famous internet meme song came out this year
Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine
Steve Winwood - Roll With It
Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry, Be Happy
Beach Boys - Kokomo
Tracy Chapman - Fast Car
Van Halen - When It's Love
Sting - We'll Be Together
Joan Jett - I Hate Myself for Loving You
John Cougar Mellencamp - Cherry Bomb
(I also realized that when I came across Whitney Houston's "So Emotional" in the 1988 hits list that it was the year I got my wisdom teeth removed. Irony? Fate? Synchronicity?)
The few songs I did like from 1989 all seem to be named appropriately, given it was my year of abandonment:
Boy Meets Girl - Waiting For a Star to Fall
Mike + the Mechanics - The Living Years
38 Special - Second Chance
Don Henley - The End of the Innocence
1989 marked the beginning of the invasion of the metal hair bands, "Dance/Hip Hop" (which was really just disco remonikered), Bon Jovi, and other abominations, which was main reason I stopped listening. Public taste had changed from mine.
That was also the year I relented and stopped buying vinyl and moved to CD exclusively. The trigger was Tom Petty's "Full Moon Fever." It was the last vinyl I bought because MCA had always had shitty prints (they usually came with a side of bacon), but that particular print sounded like it was already two decades old. I took it back to the store and they let me exchange it for the CD.
After that, the rare awesome album came along. Here's the mostly complete list:
U2 - Achtung Baby - 1991
Nirvana - Nevermind - 1991
Spin Doctors - Pocket Full of Kryptonite - 1991
Faith No More - Angel Dust - 1992
Dave Matthews Band - Under the Table and Dreaming - 1994
Live - Throwing Copper - 1994
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill - 1995
The Refreshments - Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy - 1996
No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom - 1996
There was a blip in 1996 when a rash of good songs were released (Collective Soul, Oasis, and the Gin Blossoms were gaining prominence then), but other than that, I tend to buy the artists I already like: Prince, The Cure, Collective Soul, U2, DMB, The Foo Fighters, and Dwight Yoakam.
The only memorable new artist added to my cannon was The Flaming Lips when they bombed the world with "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" in 2002.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Ebert Continues His Transformation into a National Treasure
As I await his new book on the apparent miracle appliance that is the rice cooker (and expanding my cooking repertoire), I love how he articulates those important things that need saying: Put Up or Shut Up.
As I await his new book on the apparent miracle appliance that is the rice cooker (and expanding my cooking repertoire), I love how he articulates those important things that need saying: Put Up or Shut Up.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
The 4-hour work week
Recently read The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated by Timothy Ferriss.
It's much like Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter (ghost writer) in that if you follow the exact advice (provided you even can), you will most likely get the results quasi-promised.
But I doubt that most people can or would want to do what these guys do, particularly if you have kids. Plus, both of these guys seem to have made most of their money in self-promotion and just a bit by actually doing what they advise.
Ferriss even admits in his book that his sports nutrition company was failing until he freaked out and ran to Europe to hide, all the time expecting a call that it had gone under. Lo and behold, while HE wasn't running it, it turned into a profitable business, which means someone working for him fixed things while he was having his hissy fit. (Please note this is my interpretation of the events he relays in his book, though he also admits in the book he's good at starting a company, but bad at running one.)
No surprise, one of his bits of advise to achieve a 4-hour work week is: have someone else do the work. So, to pound it to China, his central advise is to start up a company that has little overhead or inventory, then stand back and let your lackeys run it. Wow, huh? (And, of course, write a book about it and hope it sells a lot.)
Speaking of China, he won a National Chinese Kickboxing Championship by exploiting a rule where pushing your opponent out of bounds equates to a technical knockout. Do that three times in a match and you win, which he did. Also consider that Ferriss is a pretty big guy (tall and muscular), so pushing a Chinese guy a few feet isn't that much of an accomplishment, even if you take into consideration he's trying to kick your teeth down your throat.
While doing a bit of web research on Ferriss to get some objective info on him, I found this hilarious post: 5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss, with this great quote:
Ferriss' other advice is to be difficult during interpersonal interactions if you aren't getting what you want. One of his examples is from college: if a professor gave him anything less than an A on the first paper or non-multiple-choice test, he'd show up at their office and winnow them down over three-hour sessions where he'd pepper them with questions and challenges so he could play to their biases, but also with the implied threat that if they didn't give him an A next time, he'd be back for another grueling session.
However, he says one of the ways you can gain efficiencies in business is to "fire" your difficult customers. He realized he was spending the majority of his time on the minority of his customers, so he told them take it or leave it but don't bug him anymore. All but one left, and the one who left more or less behaved himself after that.
Note the paradox, though, that Ferriss would "fire" himself as a customer.
Verdict: Most of Ferriss' advice is largely unworkable unless you want to work constantly and be somewhat of a hypocritical jerk (and hopefully have somewhat of a talent for self-promotion).
Recently read The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated by Timothy Ferriss.
It's much like Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter (ghost writer) in that if you follow the exact advice (provided you even can), you will most likely get the results quasi-promised.
But I doubt that most people can or would want to do what these guys do, particularly if you have kids. Plus, both of these guys seem to have made most of their money in self-promotion and just a bit by actually doing what they advise.
Ferriss even admits in his book that his sports nutrition company was failing until he freaked out and ran to Europe to hide, all the time expecting a call that it had gone under. Lo and behold, while HE wasn't running it, it turned into a profitable business, which means someone working for him fixed things while he was having his hissy fit. (Please note this is my interpretation of the events he relays in his book, though he also admits in the book he's good at starting a company, but bad at running one.)
No surprise, one of his bits of advise to achieve a 4-hour work week is: have someone else do the work. So, to pound it to China, his central advise is to start up a company that has little overhead or inventory, then stand back and let your lackeys run it. Wow, huh? (And, of course, write a book about it and hope it sells a lot.)
Speaking of China, he won a National Chinese Kickboxing Championship by exploiting a rule where pushing your opponent out of bounds equates to a technical knockout. Do that three times in a match and you win, which he did. Also consider that Ferriss is a pretty big guy (tall and muscular), so pushing a Chinese guy a few feet isn't that much of an accomplishment, even if you take into consideration he's trying to kick your teeth down your throat.
While doing a bit of web research on Ferriss to get some objective info on him, I found this hilarious post: 5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss, with this great quote:
The week that Tim actually works a four-hour work week will be a cold week in hell. Tim got to where he is by being an insanely hard worker. I don't know anyone who worked harder at promoting a book than he did. But the thing is, he didn't call it work. Somehow, sliming me into having coffee with him to talk about his book is not work.
Fine. But then his four-hour work week is merely semantic. Because everything Tim does he turns into what the rest of us would call work, and he calls it not-work. For example, tango. If you want to be world-record holder, it's work. It's your job to be special at dancing the tango. That's your big goal that you're working toward. How you earn money is probably just a day job. So most weeks Tim probably has a 100-hour workweek. It's just that he's doing things he likes, so he lies to you and says he only works four hours. He defines work only as doing what you don't like.
Ferriss' other advice is to be difficult during interpersonal interactions if you aren't getting what you want. One of his examples is from college: if a professor gave him anything less than an A on the first paper or non-multiple-choice test, he'd show up at their office and winnow them down over three-hour sessions where he'd pepper them with questions and challenges so he could play to their biases, but also with the implied threat that if they didn't give him an A next time, he'd be back for another grueling session.
However, he says one of the ways you can gain efficiencies in business is to "fire" your difficult customers. He realized he was spending the majority of his time on the minority of his customers, so he told them take it or leave it but don't bug him anymore. All but one left, and the one who left more or less behaved himself after that.
Note the paradox, though, that Ferriss would "fire" himself as a customer.
Verdict: Most of Ferriss' advice is largely unworkable unless you want to work constantly and be somewhat of a hypocritical jerk (and hopefully have somewhat of a talent for self-promotion).
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
I love this picture
The cast of Star Wars.
_______________
Update:
Whisky pointed out that Anthony Daniels / C3P0 isn't in this shot, so here's what he looked like back then:
Here's a fun article with more shots from back in the day.
Just to be that way, here's my post / review on the book these shots came from. I've requested the book from the library again to get a scan of that pic I talk about, which I'll post here when I get it. Stay tuned.
_________
Update:
And here it is, the photo of Mary Lind, film control coordinator:
The cast of Star Wars.
_______________
Update:
Whisky pointed out that Anthony Daniels / C3P0 isn't in this shot, so here's what he looked like back then:
Here's a fun article with more shots from back in the day.
Just to be that way, here's my post / review on the book these shots came from. I've requested the book from the library again to get a scan of that pic I talk about, which I'll post here when I get it. Stay tuned.
_________
Update:
And here it is, the photo of Mary Lind, film control coordinator:
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