Like Pollution

"Merry Chirstmas, Merry Christmas, but I think I'll miss this one this year..." -The Waitresses

2008-12-25T00:05:00.002-05:00

I detest Christmas... but wait, that's not right.

I grew up in a family whose concept of Christmas was purely a social tradition. If my mother ever took my sisters and I to church I don't remember it. If we ever said grace on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day it is locked away in some battle scarred area of my brain. I don't remember a lot of discussion in my family about the birth of the savior, or Joseph and Mary, or the three wise men. Here is what I remember:

I remember a house filled with family and with love. I remember not liking most of my presents the day after but loving the fact that we would all still be together. I remember my grandfather driving down, usually with some other family member in tow, whether it was Aunt Lucy, or Muggy, or Smiley was really incidental, family was family. I remember him being there every single year until I was 18 and started doing Christmas on my own. I remember feeling like Christmas is really here when I am with my family.

I have worked in retail, or in customer service every years since I was 18 and for a couple before that as well. I have learned, or maybe been trained, to detest Christmas. A couple of years ago I was working in a rugby store that sold their goods online. I was the customer service person, and this year a woman made a mistake in her order but refused to acknowledge that she might have. She chewed me out and then told me that I was ruining Christmas. For the last couple of years I have worked in customer service for a theater that stages umpty-ump million performance of Christmas Carol and I think that I get tired of Christmas because I start to stress out about it so soon.

The thing that I have noticed as I watch myself reflected in others is that there is too much of an emphasis put on the material end of Christmas. And I know that I am not the first person to say this, or that I am not the first person to commit it to paper but I think that the more people say it, the more we can break the stranglehold that the Commercial nonsense holds on the event of Christmas, in whatever capacity you celebrate it.

So going forward my goal is to take my memories of my Christmases: the love, the family, the fireplaces, the warm backs and sleeping in, and try and project that forward. So, on Christmas, or Yule, or Midwinters' Eve or whatever it is that you celebrate, I will be thinking of you.

Merry Christmas.

"I think it's kind of funny, I think it's kind of sad..." -Tears for Fears

2008-10-06T23:57:00.004-04:00

Well. Despite my best attempts to become a political dissident and not vote, I have registered to vote in the upcoming election. I am disappointed in myself to be wholly honest. I wanted to throw my hands up and give the world a collective eff you and be done with the whole thing.

But then something magical happened. I realized that the reason that I am so irate at the state of our political climate is because, in essence, I am too American. I came to this realization when I reread the Declaration of Independence.

I have always thought that the DOI is one of those seminal documents in the history of man and one of the few perfect expressions of human intellect. It is brilliant in its clarity.

It is fundamentally a list of grievance by the Colonies, or United States, to the King of Great Britian, King George. They highlight everything that they feel makes them not British Subjects anymore. Illegal seizure, lack of representation, undue process of law, all things with interesting parallels in our own time.

I am not going to sit here on my bully pulpit and advocate for either of the two candidates in the election though. The truth is that I am not sure that either of them are a good match for my personal beliefs. I think that if there was a way to have a non-bloody revolution and boot the whole mess out and start anew, I would be up for it. But it isn't a perfect world, so let's work with the one we have.

First, I am not a fan of negative campaigning. It mars the subject, and when the subject is the future of American Democracy then I think that we owe it to the world to not got into ridiculous name calling.

But then still. I guess I am leaning towards the Obama ticket right now, and the reason is Sarah Palin's clumsy attacks on Obama and his "ties to terrorism" and relationship with Jeremiah Wright.

Here is my thought on this:

We are a nation of traitors, our legacy is that we stood up and fought our own government back in the 1770's because we didn't that they were standing up for us, or we though they were neglecting us, or we though they were harming us. We committed treason to become the nation that we are. It is part of the reason why the Constitution protects our Freedom of Speech in the First Amendment to the Constitution. So, does Jeremiah Wright become a bad person for using his pulpit as the launching point for his beliefs? I would say that actually, Rev. Wright is a wonderful American and I think that I would like to thank him first hand at some point in my life for reminding me why the United States is the best nation on Earth. Does that mean I agree with him? Not always, but I think that what I have read doesn't sound as far fetched as his sound bytes might portray. As for Bill Ayers. I can't think of anything more patriotic than returning the favor of our founding fathers, men who took up arms against their nation, burned and destroyed government buildings, and went to war their homeland to make their voices heard.

I think that the tactics by McCain's campaign have awoken a slumbering giant in me. I have been wanting to reread the Federalist Papers, and the Article of Confederation again. I have been wanting to remind my self that the skeleton of our country is in no way a reflection of the fat that hangs off its bones. I think I loved America once and I would say that my opinion has changed because of the assholes that run the country (bureaucrats and politicians). I think that on reading the Declaration of Independence I am not fully convinced that we remember where we came from. I want to encourage all the readers of this blog, look at the document that is the foundation of our country, read it and eat it up. Let it roll around in your head and then tell me that we are still holding those ideals to heart.

"When there's little left to believe in..." -Stars

2008-09-27T09:05:00.003-04:00

I don't think this is a big secret, I am generally disdainful when it comes to politics. The debate was on last night and I didn't watch it because I was at work. If I can catch it on youtube or something else then I will definitely watch it.

But I have this lingering feeling that the debates are just an effort to continue the pomp and circumstance of our political parade. I am more than a little curious to know how many people have already made up their minds about the election and going to watch the debates for the sole purpose of fueling the fires of their hatred for the other guy. I was reading an advice columnist who was asked whether he thought it was weird that Sarah Palin has a non-partisan attractiveness. (As an aside, I don't think I spent any time looking at her, I saw a picture of her and remember thinking about that company Glamour Shots that used to do portraits.) The columnist said that Palin didn't do anything for him and that he would be voting for Obama.

This was the day before the first of the debates.

So I am curious, we have this system where Democrats and Republicans campaign for so long that we feel like we know them come the election in November. It doesn't seem healthy.

I can't wait for this election to be over. I really can't. When I think about this stuff it makes the back of my eye twitch.

"Ramblin' where to begin..." - The Decemberists.

2008-08-31T09:50:00.002-04:00

August is crashing to halt and I am having trouble remembering where the year went. I am also celebrating my 8th anniversary to Lovely Wife this weekend. So we head up to see our friends, and newly weds, Drs. Greenberg and Baden; or as we call them in the home, Drs. BadBerg. It has a ring to it. You must admit.

Well let's recap the month. I have been reading a book called The Cave for the month. I love it, but it has an odd writing convention and I feel like I am relearning to read. The story is ostensibly about art and family and capitalism and how the three things intersect. Awesome stuff. I can't wait to finish it so that I can finish up my books for my summer club and then start reading Blindness, which is being turned into a movie with Julieanne Moore.

On the movie front I feel like I saw a lot of shit, Journey to the Center of the Earth was entertaining, but thin; Mummy 3 was a disappointment even by my wildly low standards of what it should have been; I know I saw something else that was pathetic but it was so pathetic that I honestly can only remember that Death Race was one of the promos. Ohh... Hold on... It was Hell Boy, not bad actually, but not memorable... obviously.

However, all is not lost for the end of the summer movies. Tropic Thunder was a movie I went to only because I don't like people throwing morality down my throat and telling me what I should think is offensive. Apparently the head of the Special Olympics took offense to the portrayal of an actor playing a ret... umm... special needs person? in the film. So naturally I jumped right into line. I don't remember laughing so hard at a movie in a long time. RDJ was fantastic, Ben Stiller, who I usually don't like, was funny. Jack Black was Jack Black. But this is all old material. The stars of the movie for me were Matthew McConaghy as an agent and Tom Cruise in a fat suit as a Super Mogul. Tom Cruise earned a movie from me with his dancing alone.

That is how I am going to start doing movies. An actor/actress has to earn the next movie, by having a good role in a film. Mike Myers, for example, has to come out with another movie like Studio 54 before I will see a film of his, because the Austin Powers bits are getting tired. Tom Cruise dancing in a fat suit means that I am going to see something of his soon, same with Matthew McConaghy.

The last two movies I saw were Traitor and Elegy.

Traitor, starring Don Cheadle, is brilliant. Run don't walk to this movie. It is hard to describe what this movie is about. But it is a political thriller in the same style as Syriana. I love Don Cheadle and it should be noted that if he played a paper bag in a movie about a supermarket chain, I would be the first person in line.

Elegy, stars Ben Kingsley as an English professor who is unmarried, tom cattish, and aging. Penelope Cruz comes into his life and then things get turned on their heads. It was really heart warming and I will say that Ben Kingsley has earned enough movies that I just keep the account open and see the stuff he is in.

On an exercise front, I started logging my running distance using the website Map My Run and I am happy to report that I ran 20 miles in the last two weeks of August and I biked 8 miles yesterday (along with a 2 mile run) for a grand total of 28.5 miles logged. It feels pretty good. My pants are a little looser, not much but a little. I will take it, too.

Last thing, and this is my favorite thing. Sailing. I have been taking out the Laser at our club a lot lately, for one it is a boat that I can get moving. It is designed with heavier sailors in mind and I can hike out and really get that thing moving up wind. It is so much fun, but the workout you get in your core is excruciating and so I now have other things to work on.

"We'd race for our true love, and easily win it. In and old spinach can with a mast stuck in it." -Jimmy Buffet

2008-08-25T14:28:00.002-04:00

So over the past few weeks I have been on this tear of activity that has led me to run over thirteen miles this last week. It doesn't seem like much on paper, I have friends that routinely run 13 miles in a clip, but they are not six feet tall and over three hundred pounds. So this seems like a big deal to me.

I have come up three different courses that spiral through downtown Providence in lengths of 2.8, 3.6 and 4.6 miles. I run every other day (so the even numbered days and then in September it will be the even numbered days because of the whole thirty-one day month thing. I am not particularly fast, but I am committed and I have woken up twice now-against my will-and gone out for my run.

My driving force for this two fold:

First and foremost my step-dad and I are going to be attempting to climb and summit Mt. Rainier next summer. This would be a monumental experience and my biggest fear is that I get started and can't pull my lumbering frame up the mountain. So the easiest solution is to lose the lumbering frame.

The other mitigating factor is a new hobby. I started taking sailing lessons at the Communtiy Boating Center in Providence. I highly recommend it. First the instructors are competent and willing to help out, if you are willing to listen. I have picked up a couple of books about the technicals of sailing--one is Learning to Sail by the instructor at the Annapolis Sailing School, which is like a how to not die in a dinghy book; and the other is called The Why Book of Sailing, which has some really interesting practical physics information about sailing. But most importantly I am spending time on the water.

The CBC has a fleet of Hunter 140's, good for beginners, easy to rig, but I learned this weekend, a lot like sailing a patio. Somebody, and I hope the live long happy lives, donated a Laser II (pictured to the right) and I got to go out and sail a bit in it this weekend. HOLY COW what a difference. The thought of taking out a Hunter now seems so anti-climactic. I can't wait to get out and do some more sailing on that boat. Which brings me to the whole point of this post.

Completely by random I have found my favorite, non-family, blog on the web. I was searching for websites that would help me tailor a work out to something that would benefit me if I was going to try and make a run at sailing in some races next summer when I stumbled onto Proper Course.

The site is run by the The Tillerman and he lives, as the crow flies, fifteen or sixteen miles from me. It is so nice to read his take on sailing and to have it make some sort of sense. I have been diligently dodging responsibility as I post through his back blogs, all the while looking out the window of office desk and watching the flag at the top federal building; right now it stands straight, which bodes well for my patio sailing class at 5:30.

Thanks, Tillerman, for the great blog.

Tomorrow my running goal is to bring my time down to a ten minute mile. That would be shaving two minutes off my average over the last two weeks. Wish me luck.

"I am the pick in the ice, do not cry out or hit the alarm..." Radiohead

2008-08-18T07:30:00.003-04:00

I took a trip with Lovely Wife down to Newport RI over the weekend to go and look at boats. While we were there we saw the Puma team, of the boat Il Mostro, working on the rigging and getting things geared up for a practice sail. The Volvo World Ocean race starts in October and they are one of the teams competing.

I am using that boat as inspiration for my working out. So today I ran 3.6 miles in town. I did it in about 30 minutes. I stepped out of the house at 6:40 and walked back in at 7:12. So the interesting thing to me is that I am running under a ten minute mile. That is pretty good for me I think, considering the last time I ran girls were yucky and the coolest thing ever was Rodimus Prime or a 1st. edition Snake Eyes, without the swivel arms.

The other even that I am using as my inspiration for this new burst of activity is THE ASSAULT ON MT. RAINIER! In my head I am using this as justification for walking up and running. I am thinking about it in Everestian terms, even though I know that like 3000 people summit Rainier a year. But next year I will be one of them and then from there, who knows maybe we will get all crazy and try and summit the five tallest US peaks or head to Europe. Why not. It isn't as crazy as it sounds.

Which leads me to my revelation from the weekend. At one point I said that I needed to start living in reality. But then the absurdity of it hit me. If I buy a boat and live on it and sail when I want to sail (that is what I was talking about just before the statement) then I am in fact living in reality. And there is nothing that prevents me from doing that, except me.

I have decided to run without the help of my iPod. I hope that Steve Jobs doesn't come and take it away from me now that I have said that. But part of the reason is that I can let my wander to far when I am listening to music. I feel like the goal of this should be to stay centered and present. To hear the footfall on the pavement and think about the feat that I am accomplishing with every step. I know it sounds hokey. But it got through 3.6 miles so I am going to take it.

Now I am going to stretch my back out, before it seizes.

"I'm a new soul..." Yael Naim

2008-08-16T09:13:00.002-04:00

In a completely untypical burst of autumn activity I have started running. Today I ran 3.4 miles. I have also started taking sailing lessons and am going to be going out a lot and sailing around the bay here in Providence.

Why all the activity? you ask. Well my step-dad wants to summit Mt. Rainier in August or September next year. He just broke his hip. I figure fuck this. If a man that just broke his hip can get in shape to summit a mountain, I can lose the weight I have to lose (about 75 pounds) to make it happen.

So I am running. I also have these push up things that were designed by a Navy Seal. You can tell that because they hurt like hell the next day. But I guess that is how you know it is working right? From the tingle and the inability to scratch your armpit.

Last night was a bit of a disappointment for me and sailing because the winds were actually too strong. In retrospect I am glad I didn't go out. I am not, after all, Dennis Conner.

I started work again which was a mixed bag, but I have been busy because I have a lot to do before Sept 15 when our season starts up.

Outside of that I am putting the finishing touches on my last two posts about the summer trip to Europe and I will include some links to a Flickr site (if I haven't already). It is taking me a little longer to get it finished because we spent more time in Reykjavik then we did in Copenhagen or Oslo and I had more of a mixed bag experience with it.

Last thing I want to say is that if you own a dog and you leave that dog at home when you go to restaurants, well... thank you. I hate, with a passion, people who bring dogs to patio style restaurants and let them roam all over the place sniffing and licking other patrons. Pets a personal choice, and you should leave them at home, or if you bring them with you to your favorite coffee shop, bakery, whatever. For god's sake tie them up. I can't get a person to spread peanut butter on a bagel for me because of people that are allergic to nuts, but people that suffer from pet allergies are screwed, because the shih tzu is cute. Blech.

"And The Whole World Has To Answer Right Now Just To Tell You Once Again... Who's Bad?" -Michael Jackson

2008-07-31T23:10:00.003-04:00

I got to see two movies today, one was Hellboy 2 and it was fine, there was nothing to it. I got my $7.50's worth when Ron Perlman and Doug Jones (Hellboy and Abe Sapien, respectively) sang Barry Manilow's Can't Smile. It was awesome.

The other movie I saw, and thank the G-ds this was a free sneak preview was Swing Vote.

Now, I said before I walked into the theater that I was going because I adore Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane, and I was interested to see Dennis Hopper and Kelsey Gramer as Presidential candidates. I don't typically like Kevin Costner, I have always thought that he was kind of a one-trick pony and that after Bull Durham it was a pretty ugly downward slide. But that is just me. He makes a gazillion bucks a year, he has a daughter with an Ivy League education and I sit in my efficiency apartment typing up a movie review that maybe eight people will read, so fuck me.

Much to my surprise, however, casting wasn't the problem. Neither was photography, or directing, or acting or anything with Kevin Costner. The problem with this story is two fold: For enders it is a movie based on a moral imperative that is rousingly delivered in the final five minutes of the movie, which to sum it up, We the people made this mess. The starter of the shit show is a faulty premise based around a felony offense and a call to civic duty. But it fails because it is based around a lie that never comes to the light.

Normally I would warn about spoilers--and I guess I am right now--but fuck that. If you see this movie I want no part of it. This is the worst movie I have seen in probably three years and the last time I remember being this angry at a movie was when I saw Very Bad Things.

Anyway, back to the task, here is the premise. A little girl is taking her civic responsibility very seriously. So she registers her father to vote. Then she tells him, Dad, it is really important that you vote, please do it, pick me up at the polling center. But he doesn't. Because he is a fuck-up. He actually gets fired from his job because he is drinking on the clock, and then proceeds to the bar to get drunk, and finally passes out in his truck. He never makes it to the polls.

Instead his civically minded daughter decides to vote for him. She obviously forges his name on the voting record and then as she is about to vote, a cleaning woman unplugs the machine... tragedy ensues with hearty guffaws.

The travesty here isn't the movie. Gramer and Hopper are great Presidential candidates who lend earnestness and spinelessness in equally believable parts; Tucci and Lane are scene stealers as the guys pulling the strings, and Costner and Carroll play a beautiful troubled single family.

The problem with this movie lies in its failing to achieve the goals. The only characters that are honest through the movie are the scummy politicos who are the guys behind the guys. They unabashedly maneuver their candidate to the victory line and in the end they own up to their motivations, for Lane it is being an idealist with something to win and for Tucci it is securing legacies.

EVERYBODY ELSE IN THAT MOVIE IS BEYOND REDEMPTION! The Presidential candidates waffle on the topics that seem to mean the most to them. The Republican is seen backing gay marriage and opening a Wildlife preservere; the Democrat is backing stronger immigration policy and pro-life; all because hapless Bud can't seem to get his head around a question.

Which brings us to the news reporter. This is a character that is presented with the fact that the girl lied and that Bud has no right to vote because his daughter signed his name and instead looks the other way, even after screaming her head off about ethics for ninety minutes. If this movie is meant to present us with an ethical dilemma, which it does, it resolves that dilemma by doing the wrong thing. Imagine you are in a position where you are presented with evidence that will stop one man from deciding the fate of the presidential election, and instead of telling that story and allowing the constitution to work the way it's designed--allowing the House of Representatives to choose the President--you put on a cable-knit sweater and sit beside the felonious family at a rodeo ground debate.

The civically minded girl never comes clean about her part in the whole affair even after watching her father get tugged, pulled, and swayed; and seeing the ugly side of the political process she loves so much in the first twenty minutes. Instead she allows the world to believe that her father got to the poll on time. If Bud were doing his job as a father he might've even said to his daughter, "Honey we can't live this lie, it just doesn't feel right." Because we already had the story present us with his morality. He's lazy, not evil. After being caught drinking his boss--and high school friend-- says, Bud, give me a reason why I shouldn't fire you, just one reason to keep you and staff. But Bud knows that there isn't one, and rather than making something up he allows himself to be fired.

If the point of this movie was to rouse up the slumbering masses from their apathy and help them to get motivated about the issues that will decide this November's election between McCain and Obama, then I think it might have horribly missed the mark. Here is what the movie showed me:

Presidential candidates are little more than mouthpieces of a platform. Leadership has very little to do with becoming President because the guys that design the platforms and strategize behind the scenes are the ones who are really running.
Don't trust the media. They can't help. If their job is to inform and help in some small way to deliver the truth, they fail too. And they fail for largely selfish reasons because they are human and prone to their own emotional failings.
The problem with true civic responsibility is that most people don't understand how it works. There are fail safes for bad ballots, the Constitution has a contingency plan set up for just this sort of thing.
Any moral imperative based on faulty morality is doomed to failure. The only way to make this story work is to have Bud begrudgingly pulled away from a foosball game where he loses money, then have step in to the polling center and cast his vote. Then the machine becomes unplugged. Because what he have here is actually a great lesson in how voter fraud works and how the people responsible for fighting are largely relying on people to the do the right thing. (Read Leviathan it won't work.)

But because I don't want to end this revant (a combination of review and rant) on a sour note I want to talk about three things that did help redeem this movie for me.

First, the casting choice of New Mexican politicians. Brilliant. The guy that played the Secretary of State was awesomely cast because he looks like a Salty New Mexico Politician, and I have known more than a couple of them.

The guy that played Lewis is named Charles Esten and he stole every single scene he was in for me. He is charged with protecting the family by the Secret Service and in the background of the scenes he is in mopping floors or reading mail or doing dishes. My favorite scene involves him standing in the back of the class while Molly (the daughter) defends her father for being a drunk. In the scene he has the earpiece to his walkie talkie out of his ear and resting on his jacket. It is too beautiful to be a mistake. I am going to pretend that it was Esten's decision.

Lastly, this film was shot with the help of the New Mexico State Investment Council Film Commission. I don't understand how this works exactly but I used to go to NMSIC meetings and here is my understanding: if a film maker is willing to shoot and finish a film in New Mexico the Film Commission, which is an executive branch organization will grant them certain tax relief during the process. It will also lend them money with a small interest rate that is payable after the movie is finished and released. Here is why I like this program. It draws Hollywood to New Mexico and it employs New Mexicans in high paying movie jobs. The downside is that they don't have any control on the quality of the film.

Outside of those three things I have nothing positive to say about this movie, I think that there are funny scenes and I think that the actors and the director did a fine job with the material they were given, but the material itself was written poorly and in a rush. If you see this movie after reading this revant (trademark) then it is on your shoulders alone. Because I am telling you right now. This movie sucks. Bad.

Summer Trip part 2

2008-07-29T14:28:00.001-04:00

1st leg, Boston to Oslo, Norway.

I am one of those people who doesn’t mind showing up to the airport early. Showing up late stresses me out, showing up on time stresses me out. My feeling on it is that if I am at the airport, two or three hours early what is the worst that happens? Maybe I buy a lunch I am not sure I need, or I sit and watch children run ape-shit around the airport. But the upside is that if the gate changes, or there is a delay I am there and I know about it well in advance, which I think out weighs the kids and the lunch.

The Boston Logan International wing of the airport is funny. They have a vending machine that sells, wait for it, iPods, Sony PSPs and accessories to go with both. Imagine a coke machine, filled with expensive electronics and that is what you have. It has a credit card swipe and a then you push a couple of buttons and then viola you are holding a high-priced consumer electronic device. Amazing. I was blown away by it. I need to get out more.

I flew Iceland Air which I had heard tons about before actually experiencing it. I have to say that the thing that makes it okay is that the flight to Reykjavik seems a lot more tolerable then the flight to either London, Manchester, or Venice, the three other cities in Europe I have flown into. But outside of the ease of flying into Reykjavik Iceland Air is, in fact, just another airline. The fly Boeing 757s in apparently one configuration and it is fairly uncomfortable if you are above 6’0”. We had a window and a middle seat for the overnight flight so I asked to be moved into a row which I noticed was unoccupied, citing my concerns about space. The airline accommodated my request but they didn’t tell me that the seats were bulkhead seats, meaning they have more leg room, but the seats are narrower because the trays slide into the armrest and you can’t put them up. It seems silly to complain about it, but I am going to anyway because I work in Customer Service and I think 90% of the job is distilling what the customer says they want into what they actually want. Iceland Air didn’t really do that. But oh well.

We got into Oslo on time and had a small scare with our bags. They have this feature in Oslo where they inform you when a plane’s bags are on the belt and when the last bag is on. It is tremendously informative, but can also inspire fear and rancor. We were staring at the empty carousel spinning around bags from Reykjavik and Vienna and watching anxiously for some sign of our bags. I would have taken anything ranging from the bags complete and intact to a tripod or a piece of underwear making the round trip journey. We got our bags no problem, I can only assume that someone forget to unload one of the carts back in the belly of the luggage sorting system. But I will forever associate the song “Girl from Ipanema” with lost luggage now because of a man who was cheerfully whistling the song while waiting for his bags, also on the same flight, to show up.

So Lovely Wife has done a bit of a blow-by-blow on our trip to Europe and I would rather not create a ton of overlap for our dual readership. So I am going to take a slightly different tack on this posting and talk about the things that I noticed that are more cultural, or sociological.

So to kick it off... Any rumors you hear about Europe’s public transit system being superior to the US you can absolutely rely on to be the G-ds Honest Truth. We took a train from the guts of the Oslo Airport (which ought to win an award for most easily navigable airport in the world) right into downtown Oslo, and then walked a meager block to our hotel. It was fantastic. While in Oslo we took every form of public transportation they offer and here is my thought on it. If New York, DC or Boston had this thorough of a set up, scads of stops, everything running on time, tons of ticket vending stations, there would be no need to own a car in those cities. San Francisco’s transit system has similar coverage but that is a geographical thing and the city of San Fran shouldn’t get credit for being hedged in on a peninsula. The buses in Oslo are clean and the drivers are friendly.

I also noticed that Oslo, and maybe this is true of Norway as a whole, are very proud people. We went to two museums that really drove this point home for me and they couldn’t have been more different. The first was the Nowegian Football Museum. Yes. I went to a museum dedicated to Football (or soccer). And it was probably near the top of the museums I went to. It had a heap of useful information about the Norwegian FA, their history and their famous players. But it also had useful exhibits about FIFA and the evolution of the game, such as the institution of the red and yellow cards. All of this was accompanied by a tour of the grounds and also the locker room for the home team. You were allowed to touch the pitch, but not walk on it. The stadium called Ullevaal Stadium holds about 35,000 people and is beautiful and modern and it makes me sad that the MLS has to play in shitty stadiums that double as American Football Stadiums. The guide that we had was a kid named Per. He was profoundly knowledgeable about the history of the FA, and I got the sense that he worked for them, or for the stadium somehow. Towards the end of the tour you get to see a display of the past uniforms, each bearing the Norwegian Flag, and the proposed new team kit that bore, instead of the flag, a more stylized depiction of Nordic dragons intertwined. If you are a football fan, then think about England’s Three Lions. Apparently when the NFA announced and unveiled the new shirts the country unanimously went into an uproar about it, to the point of leading protests in the streets outside the stadium. I wonder if that happened to the US National team if the couple thousand football fans would think to protest?

The other museum that really punched in Norway’s pride was the World War II Resistance Museum. It was chock full of information about the Norwegian Resistance to the Germans during WWII. Not just the military aspect of it either. They talked about clergy and teacher’s strikes over being told to teach certain topics to the students. They disagreed with the government stance and so they all quit. The result was that they were rounded up and sent to Concentration Camps. Now... this is one of those things that I don’t know how to say delicately but I am going to try anyway.

I think that sometimes the concentration camps get lost to the Jewish cause, and rightfully so, but it was so much more than that. The concentration camps happened to the world, and we shouldn’t forget that protestants, Catholics, Jews, teachers, mothers, fathers, children, athletes, farmers, whites, blacks, gays, straights, Dutch, Poles, in short everybody was affected by them. Even the US rounded up people during World War II and isolated them. Everybody in the world, bar none, should be ashamed at they we allowed other people to be treated. In the end, Humanity won the battle of World War II, but when I look at how things are playing out in the world I can’t help but be concerned that we are going to lose the war.

Sorry for that soapbox episode, but I haven’t been able to get some of the images of the Resistance Museum out of my head and I am still really taken aback by them. So onward we move.

Lovely Wife and I then headed out to Copenhagen. We took a ferry from Oslo down the Oslo Fjord. Ferry is a bit of a relative word because it was a cruise ship with a holding pen for cars with eleven decks a half dozen bars, a dance floor and a venue for live music. Which was awesome.

The night we were on the boat there was a six piece band playing; two guitarists, a bass, a keyboard, and drummer and a percussionist on bongos (or something similar). The band was good in the way that surreal cover bands are good.

Imagine that you play guitar and are pretty good at it too. Now imagine that you need a gig, hear about cruise ships as an alternative to pounding the streets looking for bar gigs. Now imagine that the only thing your band can agree upon is a selection of cover songs from the 60’s and 70’s of American Music. That was what he had. It was fantastic. Kenny Rogers, Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Eagles, CCR, The Beatles, Commander Kody at one point, and I am 100% sure that this band didn’t know a single one of the words. They seemed to know all the sounds, but the words were ancillary to the objective. The audience was quiet and reserved, the danced to anything that was played in three four time and some of them would get up and cut a rug to the up tempo stuff, but when Holger (the band leader, whose name I completely fabricated) started to “wail on his axe” they would flee the floor like children at a lima bean convention. The highlight of the night for me was when Holger said, “now we are going to try something a little different.” Then pulled out a set of Pan Flutes and did a little rehearsed schtick before playing “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.” However, nobody knew any of the words outside of the refrain that gives the song its name. GLORIOUS! I was cracking up the whole time, but not maliciously, they were genuinely a fun band to watch and listen to, like a really good wedding band.

The cultural significance of their performance for me was the perception of what American Music is. They really played like an American band. And maybe this makes me naïve, but there is a wealth of Norwegian and Danish folk and pop/rock music out there and they played American standards. A fact that reminded me how important American Culture is. Sometimes I think we are only represented through our entertainment products; and when that includes shows like the shit about the Kardashians or Paris Hilton, or Orange County Housewives it makes me cringe. Because we are putting our worst foot forward. Entertaining as these hateful shows may be, the rest of the world sees this.

Summer Trip pt. 1

2008-07-29T14:27:00.001-04:00

I have been reticent in posting while I was away because I had intended to keep a written diary of all my traveling over the summer and then compile it into something spectacular; and who knows it still might happen but at this point I am thirteen days behind the date I will be putting in the journal, which I think defeats the purpose of a journal. But fuck it. If Jose Saramago can write a book without using quotation marks, then I can run a journal a couple of weeks behind schedule.

I had the opportunity to do some traveling this summer. It was grand even when it didn’t go according to plan. I started off seeing my friend Donette from high school. We haven’t really seen each other since graduation and it was nice to be able to spend a couple of days hanging out with her and her husband Pete. They live in LA in Echo Park and I like the area, but I am not sure how I feel about LA as a whole. It is weird. Not really good or bad, just different then what I am used to. When Donette came home on Day two of my trip with Bronchitis I knew things were going to be wonky. A further recap of my trip to California involves the following items, in order:

A low emergency evacuation from the Los Padres National Forest, which is now in ashes.
Lunch with a good friend
A walk through San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park
The words “Homeless in California” being shameless used to facilitate a plane trip at no penalty so that I wouldn’t be underfoot at my friend’s father’s house any longer.
San Francisco’s China Town and some of the best dim sum, walking and conversation I have ever done.
Green Gulch Farm in Marin County. A place that is truly blessed and some of the most beautiful landscape that the G-ds saw fit to create.

Then I got home early. Hated every second of it. And couldn’t wait to leave again. But two things happened in the interim before my trip to Europe that made things work out for the best.

First was that I got to and see Josh Emmons do a reading for his new novel Prescription for a Superior Existence. Josh Emmons is a friend of a good friend of mine named Josh (who only seems to leave comments when he receives a shout out). I have read his other book, titled The Loss of Leon Mead, and enjoyed it so it was nice to get to meet him. I enjoyed the reading immensely, it has a great feel to it and it is something that I can wrap my head around. Unfortunately for Josh Emmons I have a summer reading list that I am hell bent on finishing which still has two books on it: The Cave, by Jose Saramago and My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk. So to be in the queue behind two Nobel Prize Winners isn’t a bad place to be.

Secondly, I convinced Lovely Wife that the only thing made sense for Fourth of July would be to go to Staten Island to visit our good, make that great, friend Tony who is renowned across the southern most borough of New York for his hospitality and summer barbeques.

Then it was off to my Mom’s for two days where we shopped, we dropped and we repacked my bags for Europe at least twice, maybe three times.

Then a trip to Boston and we were off.

"Lookin back on places I've been to. " - Moonpools and Caterpillars.

2008-07-27T14:35:00.003-04:00

I have started a big post about my trip to Europe and realized that two-thirds of they way through I am at three thousand words. So... I am going to not put people through that and instead parse it out once I am finishes in installments. Like Dickens, only duller. In the meantime my pictures are all up on on Flickr. I am pretty new to Flickr and also pretty new to photography. This is no where near the total of pictures but they are the ones I am will to let people see, which I guess means I am proud of them.

So enjoy that while I am editing and parsing the rest.

See you soon.

In the meantime, that is, while are looking at my pictures and waiting for the post, go and see Dark Knight. OHMIGOD!!! If last year was the summer of the let down action film, this is the summer of redemption. So Good. Every movie is better than the last one. (I make exceptions for Wanted and Hell Boy.)

"All I want is a good look at your underside." -The Decemberists

2008-07-11T16:58:00.002-04:00

First night in Oslo, July 11th 2008.

I saw four prostitutes. Right? Legitimate, on the street, standing on corners, prostitutes. It was awesome. It is eleven p.m. right now and dusk is just setting in. I had mussels that were steamed in white wine, chilli, dill and vegetables for dinner. Oslo is gorgeous and I really can't wait to get out and stretch my legs with the camera and take some pictures. It is going to be exciting.

The flight over here was interesting, I didn't sleep at all, which is pretty normal for me. I have a hard time sleeping on international flights because I am generally too excited and the seats are small for me.

More later...

"I left my heart in San Francisco..." - Tony Bennet et al.

2008-07-02T11:54:00.002-04:00

I am displaying all the television symptoms of depression. I realized this this morning when I didn't pry myself from bed until eleven o'clock. My excuse is basically that I don't have anything to do which is a half-truth because the stuff I do have to do can be done from the safety or comfort of my bed.

Luckily I know what the major contributing factors are:

1. Getting all prepped up for a Japanese Zen summer of working and zazen, and then having it taken away by the forest fires in California is a huge factor. I was looking forward to actually experiencing something of a Soto Zen lifestyle and to get a taste of it--twenty hours worth--and then be evacuated is tough. Because I am back to the academic analysis of it. BOOORRRING!

2. San Francisco might be my favorite city of all time, and I was only there for two days. They have nice enough weather, they have a great literary scene with tons of great book stores, tons of great restaurants and an incredible Chinatown. It might qualify as a perfect town for me. I was actually heart stricken when I my plane took off and I think that if I had a reason for staying, family or loved ones there I might have wept. Rarely does a city have that strong of a pull on me so quickly.

So today the goal is just to get out and get Lovely Wife's bike to the shop, and mine in for a tune-up. The gears are skipping on uphills and it is getting pretty bad. It used to be something I could fix myself but I don't want to go and break things.

I saw two movies on Sunday. The first was Wanted and the second was Disney's Wall-E. Reviews will be forthcoming.

"The western desert lives and breathes In forty five degrees" - Midnight Oil

2008-06-25T11:59:00.002-04:00

I am typing up this blog post from Los Gatos, CA to let everybody know how it is going in the Buddhist Monastery were I was staying.

It isn't because on the 23rd they evacuated the place because of a three fires (that are now two fires because some of them have converged) that were surrounding the place. I am sitting at a friend's father's house drinking coffee, looking at a koi pond and thinking about taking a swim. Not exactly Buddhist meditation, I know.

Here was the clincher when they announced the evacuation.

Head Guy: "The fire service has called and we are not in eminent danger. However, this is a precautionary mandatory evacuation and if you chose to stay we need some information from you. We need your Next of Kin, your emergency contact information, and the name of your dentist.

(Cue the hushed uncomfortable laughter)

You also need to know that if you choose to stay you are in peril."

That was an easy decision to make. I left. Ergo, Los Gatos, pool, Koi Pond, Coffee. It seemed like a fair trade to me. When they said the bit about the dentist I was sold on leaving. I actually had a harder time trying to decide between Thai and Chinese food in San Francisco yesterday when I went to go and see the city.

Which leads to me to say: Five hours in San Fran and I am ready to move there.

"I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel..." -The Cure

2008-06-22T01:13:00.002-04:00

Echo Park photos
I took these pictures in Echo Park in Los Angeles. These are my favorites of a bunch.

"Tae-Kwon-Leap is not a path to a door..." -The Frantics

2008-06-21T09:27:00.002-04:00

Today I travel north from LA to Salinas and then from there on to Carmel Valley.

I am heading into a Buddhist monastery for two weeks. There will be an epic post on the other side of this experience.

Have a good two weeks.

Read One Hundred Years of Solitude. It might be the most beautiful book I have ever read.

"Small talk will be just fine, Your voice is everything" -Frou Frou

2008-06-17T17:39:00.003-04:00

Overheard at a Starbucks:

Two guys sitting in different sections of the restaurant having a conversation about books.

Young Guy: You know who I love, and I would say is the finest American writer: Joseph Heller.
Old Guy: Catch 22, I met him.
YG: Stop it you are going to make me jealous.
OG: I read a lot, I have met a lot of people.
YG: You know who else I like?
OG: *Shakes his head*
YG: Toni Morrison, I think she is the best American writer.
OG: The Bluest Eye. They did that over here. Did you see it?
YG: Where? Where did they do that?
OG: Over here. *gestures behind his head* at the Black Rep. They did it.
YG: Was that Toni Morrison?
OG: Have you read her?
YG: Just her criticism. She is one of America's finest. She invented the dual minority classification in literature. The concept that a character can be both black and also a woman. She is great I have read all her work.
OG: I like James Patterson, he is what I call four hour fiction. I can read one of his books in four hours. I read a lot. You wouldn't even believe it.

Meanwhile your's truly is sitting in a chair bearing witness to this exchange feeling like I somehow stepped into a Hemingway short story that got lost.

"Now I wanna trigger your heart, There's something else besides a silvery part..." - Spoon

2008-06-08T08:51:00.002-04:00

I have a new mission for the next twelve months. To devour everything that Gabriel Garcia Marquez has ever written. I want to eat his short stories, his biography, criticism of him,.back listings of some of his newspsper articles, interviews, fiction, non-fiction. All of it. Every shred. Because I heard somewhere that you have to be a pretty good writer to get one of those Nobel Prizes and my other understanding is that writers read a lot and end up incorporating what they read into what they write. Ergo, if I read a lot of Nobel Prize Winner, I will write like a Nobel Prize winners. It seems logical.

I just finished [i]Love in the Time of Cholera[/i] translated by Edith Grossman. This is a can't put it down book. I loved Ian McEwan's [i]Atonement[/i] by Gabo's book moved me.

I don't want this to turn into a book report, but I think I should summarize the plot of the book so that you, the reader, have a frame of reference. The book is effectively divided into three parts. Part one deals with the presence before the death of Doctor Juvenal Urbino de la Calle. He is a prominent physician and an important man in town. He teaches at the medical college, is the founder and president of the arts school, he has a very high station within the community. Dr. Juvenal Urbino is married to a woman Fermina Daza and they have been together since she was eighteen and he was twenty-eight.

Part II is a flashback that covers two-thirds of the book. It chronicles the lives of Dr. Juvenal Urbino, Fermina Daza, and a man named Florentino Ariza.

Part III picks up where Part I left of right after the death of Dr. Juvenal Urbino.

That is all of the plot that I am willing to give-up because this has become a book that a good human should read and if I spoil it for anybody then you won't read it, and I will have inadvertently made another crappy human being.

What I want to write about is the way the story comes together and some of the devices that Garcia Marquez uses during the telling of the story. The caveat to all of this is that I don't read spanish. I read a translation that was done by Edith Grossman. I have two understandings about this: the first is that Gabriel Garcia Marquez works very closely with his two translator (the other is a man named Gregory Rabassa) so that they really know the story and capture it; the second is that Grossman and Rabassa are as good as they get. But they are translators and at some point they have to have an effect on the story because you have different artistic visions.

First I think that the introduction of the characters is beautiful Dr. Juvenal Urbino is introduced investigating the death of his friend, a photographer and artist, who has killed himself, more over it has been planned for some time.

By the time Juvenal Urbino we understand so much of his practicality around emotion that Florentino Ariza becomes the perfect counterpoint.

The introduction of Florentino Ariza is the start of the second part and it introduces Fermina Daza as well. The beauty of Part II of the book is that Garcia Marquez hands off perspective beautifully. He will use anything to do it as well, a photograph, a hat, a letter, a flower, a song floating on the air from the cemetary. With seamless transition he hands the story back and forth between the characters and the reader is never left with that forlorn feeling of having been lost along the way. There have been points in books where point of view shifts and I have to thumb back a couple of pages to figure out where I went wrong or what I stopped understanding. That never happened in 350 pages. In fact, the only time flipped back was to make sure that I hadn't missed one of the most brilliant parts of the book: the parallel introductions of Juvenal Urbino and Florentino Ariza

The other thing that starts to happen in part II is that you really get introduced to the voice in the book that sees Love as a sickness. Ariza is infected with it throughout the story and it is this infection that makes the whole story possible. Whenever Ariza is stricken with love he develops symptoms that are similar to the symptoms of cholera but we learn about this manifestation very early and it becomes an interesting conceit throughout the book.

One of the best features of the characters is their hopeless devotion to a passion, for Juvenal Urbino it is the country. Fermina Daza is devoted to her outward appearance, and Ariza to a mythical love.

Now... I started this post a week ago when I finished the book and I have to say that I had a really hard time putting it together. I don't know why though except to say that it is hard to say why you love something. I was a little scared to dissect it too much for fear of breaking up the parts and robbing the story of its natural beauty.

In other news and I can talk about this BECAUSE IT WAS AWESOME! Stop what you are doing and go and see Incredible Hulk. If that means that you are typing on a computer grading papers, or making love to your spouse/partner while you read my blog (which is flattering but weird), or if you are just trying to get up the courage to go and serve hamburgers and cranberry and club soda's to the relentless customers at the restaurant; if you are working on a story about a man modelling, healing from broken hip, or moving into your new house; stop all of that stuff and go out and see INCREDIBLE HULK!

I am not kidding. This is not a joke. I have never been as serious about anything in my life. This is the summer of the action movie and Marvel Studios is bringing back intelligent fun movies that have layers of spectacle to them.

As you may have read in my thoughts on Iron Man, thank the g-ds that Marvel has taken over control of their movie names again. What a relief. Because they are able to give the fans of the comics a great movie without having to indulge in a forty-five minutes of back story.

I am not going to submit a "review" of the movie. I can't. But I will submit three things that happened to me while I was in the theater as evidence of The Incredible Hulk's AWESOMENESS!

1. When Lovely Wife and I sat down two guys with four toddlers came and sat down behind us. FOUR TODDLERS! I knew, in my heart and marrow, that this was going to be a catastrophe. I wanted to go and ask for my money back... But I didn't I stood up, leaving my righteous indignation in row C and walked back in the theater to row K.

2. I bit through the skin of my knuckles causing some minor flesh wounds but nothing to serious, doctor says I will be fine.

3. I made sounds that I haven't made since I was in the back seat of a Mercury Topaz overlooking the White Sands Missle Range on the east side of the Oregon Mountains.

The villians are awesome, the heroes are awesome, the graphics are awesome, the story awesome, the WHOLE THING IS AWESOME! See it.

"Don't cry for me..." -Andrew Lloyd Weber

2008-05-29T14:15:00.002-04:00

Today was beautiful. I sat in my vampire chair--named so because you can not sit in it for more than thirty minutes without falling asleep--and read for most of the morning. Then I did the dishes and some laundry so that I would smell lovely when I went to work.

The sunlight that swarmed my apartment was timid, even without a cloud to hide behind. I opened the windows to allow the cool breeze blowing up the bay, weaving in and out of the downtown buildings, to wash the apartment with a new freshness.

I had a reheated lunch of chinese noodles, tofu, mushrooms and eggplant. I drank water and listened to music.

In the small breaks, which were taken to rest my eyes, I planned a trip to Buenos Aires that I will probably never take. I looked at emigration rules for three different countries and I browsed through a random selection of picasaweb photos.

It was a perfect day.

"Dumb, da dum Dumb" Indy's Theme, John Williams

2008-05-27T23:08:00.003-04:00

Don't expect a review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull. It never happened. This movie doesn't exist, I know because I saw it twice.

Put it right on the shelf with Rocky V, Highlander 2, and The Seeker. They didn't happen, this didn't happen, you can't make me believe that two once great men would defile their legacy so atrociously.

I will say this:

If they ever make an Indiana Jones 4 they better make sure of three things.

There can be absolutely no monkey-ing around. It has to be the best damn Indy movie ever made.
They shouldn't try any alien concepts that aren't tried and true. Indiana Jones is the erstwhile hunter of religious relics whose discovery neither confirms nor denies the existence of anything.
They should make sure that if they are going to get someone like Cate Blanchett to agree that they don't waste her talents by rushin into a poorly devised mentally deficient character.

Those are just some thoughts I have on Indy 4; if they ever make one.

"So much to do, there's plenty on the farm..." -Warren Zevon

2008-05-21T10:05:00.002-04:00

Frantic. Rushed. Panicky. Overwhelmed.

Those are all answers to the question, "How are you?" that I have given lately. Why? Work is wrapping up for a while, I won't have any big projects on my plate until August, but right now is crunch time. Progress reports, analysis paralysis, and P&L reports are all due by June 1. I am taking not one but two writing workshops, the reading load alone is killing me. I am trying to be a lot more diligent about writing when I have the opportunity. Lovely wife and I are going to Iceland, Norway and Denmark in July for two weeks. And at the end of June I am going to a retreat in California. I have a lot to think about that sits just over the horizon and I can't see it, but I can feel the tracks rumbling--if you get my drift.

But that doesn't mean that I am not taking time for myself.

I have seen Iron Man, twice, and I loved it, both times. I have in the past done movie reviews on summer blockbusters but I am a little worried that by doing it I might start to pull the sweater apart by a single thread. But here it goes anyway:

What makes Iron Man great is that it is a character driven super hero story. The special effects, augment the story; they don't hold it together with duct tape and a prayer. Spiderman 3, which will take its place in the pantheon of movies that never happened along with Highlander 2, and Rocky V, didn't have that. There was no character development. We didn't learn anything about the characters that we didn't know already. The arrival of Venom, was a contrivance to show an inconsiderate side of Parker and it didn't work because there was nothing there in the first place. In the end we ended up with Topher Grace (who was woefully under used) donning the suit and then, thankfully, the credits roled.

Iron Man didn't rely on non-stop action as the story careened from one ill conceived battle sequence to the next. There was no catastrophic inner battle within Tony Stark. He changed in the first half hour of the show and we saw it through his work in the caves and in his shop.

I have heard people complain that there wasn't much in the way of a villain in this story, and to an extent that is true. There wasn't a guy running around with an alternate cape or anything stupid. What we got was the reality of the situation. In the world there are people who are selfish and self-serving enough to play behind the scenes. Think of the world's greatest villain, Shakespeare's Iago, the conflict rolled along the story and we knew what was happening the entire time. Iago played Cassio against Othello the entire play and in the end the denouement was a scene. The same thing happened with Stane. We all knew he was bad. So why did there have to be a rock'em, sock'em robots scene for sixty-five minutes to prove the point.

Here is my concern with this movie. I am not sure that if Robert Downey, Jr., and to a lesser extent Jeff Bridges, hadn't been involved that it would have stood up on its own. The story was good, the direction was good, but the thing that made this a great summer blockbuster was that Tony Stark was brought to life. I believe that he exists. Same with Rhodes, Pepper Potts, and Jebediah Stane (which incidentally should go down on the list of great villain names).

This movie marked the first full fledged Marvel Productions movie. Previously, with Spiderman and Daredevil and Elektra, they got a licensing fee and maintained some amount of control over the movie; but with Iron Man, and later in the summer Incredible Hulk, they did the whole shebang then found a distributor to market the movie. It also marked probably the finest super hero movie since the first Batman and the first Superman. The real litmus test will be the sequel, which I understand is already in the works.

The other thing that I did recently was take a trip up to Salem, Massachusetts with Dr. Greenberg, my history teacher friend.

Here are my thoughts on Salem in the style of a list:

Salem is a cute town that, were it not for the Witch Trials, would have been consumed by Boston in the same way that Cambridge, Lexington and Concord have.
I had no idea the number of puns that can be made from which witch is which.
If you eat licorice bits, cranberry jelly beans, and strawberry oreo ice cream with an hour of each other the sugar crash you will have earned is unfathomable to explain.
Red's Sandwich Shop has earned the best breakfast in Salem for twenty years running and it is easy to see why: they have blueberry pancakes the size of an adult human head.
The crap for sale in Salem is the same crap that is for sale in any other touristy town in the US. If somebody were smart they would make a virtual city where you could walk around and then order the crap on-line and have it shipped to you.
In Lynn, Mass. there is a coffee shop called Javas Brewin', which, given the fact that Boston's NHL team are the Bruins, would be funner if it was called Javas Bruin.
I Learned that Capt. Dusty's in Salem created homemade ice cream. Their sign claims it, it must be true. Also I found out that Strawberry-Oreo ice cream rules. But shouldn't be consumed with red licorice and jelly beans.
The traffic in Boston is so horrendous that it takes an hour to go 18 miles. Not kidding even a little bit. An hour.
America has a sad habit of capitalizing on tragedy. The Salem Witch trials was a horrific even in our history and this town thrives on it. The Alamo, horrible blood shed and San Antonio uses it as a mascot, Wounded Knee, Station Fire, Great Quake of 1910, Mt. St. Helens. We have a nasty habit of remembering the horrible events. I know that somebody might say that we are doomed to repeat it, or triumph over misery; and to an extent I might agree. But there is a difference between capitalizing and reverence.

So that is about all that is happening. I will keep everybody that reads up to date if anything else exciting happens. But until then, I will be channeling my inner Jimmy Buffet and humming bars of "Kick it in, Second Wind"

"Whichever I choose, It amounts to the same, Absolutely nothing." -The Cure

2008-05-07T11:54:00.002-04:00

The Cure’s anthem to ennui, “Killing an Arab” had never made much sense to me as a kid. I remember hearing it as a kid in southern New Mexico and shrugging, the irony passing me by in a blaze at my utter indifference to the song. A very well read friend of mine told me as we set the earphones down on the tile floor that one day it would be one of my favorite songs.

That moment slipped into the file-box of my memories of high school, along with jumping on a trampoline at the Moen’s, watching a kid get beat up in a stair well and hanging balloons for the senior prom.

In 2004 I was at a Hastings in Santa Fe. Lovely Wife and I were doing some record shopping. She had expressed an interest in picking up a Cure album or two and I thought that was a good idea but didn’t have much of an opinion on the whole thing. Again the irony express to told-you-so-ville went blazing past me and I either missed it, or didn’t care that it was there.

One thing that jumped out at me with her selection was the sticker on the front of the CD. I can’t remember the exact wording but it was a public service announcement, of sorts. It said, in effect, that “Killing an Arab” doesn’t condone or recommend violence towards Arabs.

I thought it was funny because the song was about a guy standing on a beach having just killed an Arab.

At the same time in my life I had my first experience reading Albert Camus. It was his essay titled, “The Myth of Sisyphus” and I don’t remember a lot about it except that in college I am pretty sure I got a girl to sleep with because I was able to quote, or fake a quote from it.

Fast-forward fifteen years and I was at Borders browsing books. They had this display out called books you love to read. Among them were a host of the usual suspects of classics: Treasure Island, Last of the Mohicans, Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Bird by Bird (which I picked up) and The Stranger.

This time, for some reason I am unable to explain, I heard the Cure in my head, “I am the stranger.” And with that one refrain I bought my ticket and boarded the irony express.

A couple of days ago I posted a list of books started and not finished and put up there a couple that I was listing as “contenders for a strong finish.” HA! The Stranger came from nowhere rounded the turn and overtook every single one of them on the last straight away. The fact that the whole book weighs in at a little over ninety pages didn’t hurt.

I started reading it at work, and had to set it down because I became too engrossed by it. So I picked it up again for lunch a couple of times and then finished it on—of all places—a train to Portland, Maine.

The story is pretty basic and divided into two parts. The first part is filled with the story of a man who is neither discontented nor particularly motivated. He starts the book attending the funeral of his mother, and then returns home. He helps a friend with a girlfriend problem, drinks a lot then agrees to accompany his friend to the beach for a day of relaxing in the sun. While he is there something happens, he kills a man, and that sets up the second half, which is basically the trial and appeal process.

The thing about the book is that this is a book whose story is more of vehicle to transmit the theme and tone. The first part takes maybe a week or a week and a half, the second part is stretched out over a year. But you wouldn’t know it, because the guy is boring. And that is what the book is about. Whether it is a sardonic self-appraisal of French ennui or whether it seeks to justify it is up for the debate of men and women much smarter than me.

I have to mention the translation specifically now. This version was translated by Mathew Ward and I highly recommend it. In the translator’s notes Ward mentions the impact writers like Hemingway and Dos Passos had on Camus and his translation reflects that in the text. The almost monotonous cadence of the story really accentuates the narrator’s lack of emotion. This device is carried through every aspect of his personality. Everything bears the same weight for him: love, food, friends, fighting, and death are all inevitables that will come in time and so to assign significance to one or the other devalues the importance of the others, or so it seems.

This is by no means a light read. Fast, yes. Light, no. I am already looking forward to a reread to see what I missed the first time.

"Let's call the whole thing off..." Peter, Bjorn and John

2008-04-29T09:01:00.002-04:00

I am out of control and must be stopped. I have realized two things lately. One is that I have very good taste in music. I don't want to be grand about this, but I do. I was fed up with my iPod, a 4GB Nano that came out a couple of years ago, so I deleted everything on it and reloaded it with music that I have purchased or acquired through legal means, but not had the chance to really sit and listen to. Bands that made the cut: Au Revoir Simone, Hot Bitch Arsenal, Headlights, Jose Gonzalez, Peter Bjorn and John, Great Northern, Aloha, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, The Clientele, Benjy Ferree, Benoit Pioulard, Blonde Redhead, Brown Recluse, Dosh, Ghislain Poirer, Girl In a Coma, The Ike Reilly Assassination, Jukebox the Ghost, Matt Pond PA, Mew, The Ocean Blue (ahh the nineties indie scene), Pizzicato Five, Sigur Ros, and Via Audio. There are many more on there but that is a sample. The result is a great mix of sounds and music and I have to say that I don't understand how radio stations can still be in business when the portable MP3 player is so cheap.

The other thing I realized is that I am so behind on my reading that I am not sure when I will catch up and get anything completed. Here is a list of books started, at least a hundred pages in, and unfinished:

Kenzaburo Oe, "Somersault". This one is quickly becoming a thorn in my side. I started it a couple of years ago, set it down, restarted it, and made some progress then I stalled out during a vivid description of anal penetration. It has been slow going since then.

China Mieville, "Un Lun Dun". It's a young adult story. A girl finds out she is the "chosen" and gets whisked away to a Un-London. A place where trash walks and people wear stories as clothing. It is written a little to preciously for me and I have a bit of a hard time getting into it. I think it is very similar in its feel to "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman and since I just read that a year ago I am having trouble with getting into the PG-13 version of it.

Umberto Eco, "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana". A man loses his memory about his life, doesn't know his name, or his wife or how long he has been alive, but he can remember everything he has ever read. I got bogged down when he spent 100 pages in the attic of the Italian Villa he grew up in on a long piece of exposition about WWII Literature in Italy.

Josh Emmons, "The Loss of Leon Mead". Emmons is a friend of my friend Josh. I like the book but in fairness to it, I haven't been diligent in trying to finish it.

John Dos Passos, "The 42nd Parallel". This is just my ego at its worst. I don't know how but I got interested in reading the Lost Generation and picked this up. It is absolutely amazing and I made more progress on this last night than I did on four months of Somersault. This is my most likely prospect for a strong finish.

Rebecca McClanahan, "Word Painting". This is for a writing workshop I am taking through the Writers' Digest Online Workshops. I like the book, have about 40 pages left and if it was leisure reading I would count this as my best prospect to finish, but it isn't leisure reading and I don't know if I would read it all by myself.

Philip Pullman, "The Subtle Knife". Book two of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The first book, "Golden Compass" was turned into a movie that came out last winter. The movie was okay. Not wonderful, just okay. The second book is just taking a little time to get into and I keep setting it stupid places that I can't find right away. So again, nothing wrong with the story I just haven't given it a fair shake.

So you see the problem... here is the worst part. I keep getting books, because I see them on the street or at a used book store for a buck and half and I can't say no. So soon I will be starting "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott, and "The Stranger" by Albert Camus.

I am ridiculous. I need to be stopped. I have a lunch date with a friend from work today at noon, and then a get together with some friends this evening. Every other waking minute is going to be spent finishing the three books I am the furthest along in: namely, Oe, Eco and McClanahan.

Wish me luck.

"One thing I could never confess..." -Los Campesinos

2008-04-21T10:31:00.003-04:00

Ten years ago I was certain that music was dead in the United States. It was my 4th year in college and I remember driving from West Palm Beach, Florida to Greenwich, Connecticut. The radio in my car didn't work and I had an old school Boom box that I would feverishly tune as I drove in and out of the various signals that dot I-95. I remember three songs: "MMMM Bop" by Hanson, "Quit Playing Games with My Heart" by The Backstreet Boys, and "All for You" by Sister Hazel. By the time I hit Washington D.C. I was content to sit in the sweet mournful silence knowing that Top 40 music sucked (still does) and that music was doomed.

Then I got wrapped up in the radio station at my college. It was a crappy station. We had a gigantic music library for a radio station that couldn't be heard up at the cafeteria a paltry two hundred yards away. But it was my experience with the guys at WMVL that changed my perspective on music. My buddies at the time Ad-rock, and Tony! Tony! Tony! were instrumental in this as well. Both of them were well versed in the Ska movement (something us landlocked desert boys didn't get much of). But more importantly they got me exposed to independent record labels.

I spent my office hours as the Programming Manager and Station Manager listening to the music that was sent to us by the various music promotors and indie labels. And I was pleased to discovery that music was alive and well: it had just gone off the radio.

Labels likes Art & Crafts, Polyvinyl, Paperbag are working diligently to actually discover music and get it out to those of us that still use music as more than a background distraction and actually prefer to listen to an album in order from start to finish.

The result is Amy Millan, The Most Serene Republic, Architecture in Helsinki and Los Campesinos! The last band's new album is one that I absolutely can't turn off right now.

In "Hold on Now, Youngster..." Los Campesinos have unleashed a fury of sound. This is one of those sum of the parts albums. When I first heard the single, "You! Me! Dancing!" I was intrigued enough to buy the album, but I didn't appreciate the song until I got the whole thing in context. The context of an album, which seems to be a lost art amongst the radio play bands, is something that I grew up listening to. I cut my music teeth on "Oranges and Lemons", "Green", "Dead Letter Office", "Unforgettable Fire", "Nevermind" all albums that strung together the tracks of the album into a full story.

The individual tracks on "Hold on now, Youngsters..." are also individually quite strong. Standouts like "Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats" recall the post-punk scene of the mid-eighties and seem to channel the Pixies but by marrying it to a more aggressive version of the new romantics. "This Is How You Spell "HAHAHA, We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics" (winner of the longest song title in my library award) drives in a shoe-gazing ballad about breaking up. And "...And We Exhale and Roll Our Eyes In Unison" generates a ton of noise without losing any harmony or rhythm.

This is a pretty shitty recommendation because the long and short is that I can stop listening to it long enough to write down how much I love it.

I can only say that this album is yet further proof that music isn't dead. It is just hiding out.

"There are very many things I would like to say to you..." -Kings of Convenience

2008-04-04T16:34:00.002-04:00

Some of you more diligent--or perseverant maybe?--readers will know that I have a love-hate relationship with a band called The Kings of Convenience.

I love their song writing ability; specifically their song I'd Rather Dance With You. But I hate their albums, for I am a child of Pop music. If I am really honest about my music preferences then I admit that the first bands that really captured my attention as a kid were my mom's Beatles, Elton John and Beach Boys vinyls. I have a special fondness reserved for Gordon Lightfoot; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; and Simon and Garfunkel but they don't move me. They sit in the background and they occupy space. The other former bands make me dance.

The Kings of Convenience are CLEARLY more motivated by the latter groups. So there is a giant stretch of ground in the middle to cover. For folksy bands I think I like Kings of Convenience, but I listen to my best of Simon and Garfunkel album once a year, maybe once every two and I ALWAYS skip Scarbrough Fair. I don't like it just doesn't do anything for me musically.

Every Kings of Convenience album that I have listened to--in part or in whole--has sounded like an eleven track manifesto of Scarbrough Fair. But now... I am finally starting to think that we can bridge the gap: I present you with Versus.

I want to thank my sister, Lauryn, for prompting me to do this. The other day, while prodding me into posting something, she said, "I wish you would do music reviews." And I told her that I love writing them but they start to feel a bit tired when you read the music reviews where people use phrases like: soulful harmony, smoky jazz vocals, interloping harmony... I mean seriously what the shit does all that mean?

So here is my first foray into an album review; for my sister, who prompted me to do this.

Versus is a fantastic album; and it illustrates what I know: that Kings of Convenience is capable of producing--brilliant, near perfect pop songs. I should probably qualify the word pop. I don't mean top 40, or Clear Channel. I typically think of Rock music being driven by drums and electric guitars; funk by the bass line; Folk by acoustics; Electronica (in all its forms) by the synthesizer; Jazz by the... well Jazz is sort of its own thing; but, Pop to me is all of these things. It is the music that strives to make it all work together. I don't know how to describe it. But Versus does it, in spades.

The album is actually an album of remixes. My understanding on it is that they KoC (I can see Adam giggling now) handed over their masters to a bunch of their friends and essentially said, there you go guys have a ball with it. Then they walked away.

The result is an album that is fuller, more complex and infinitely more enjoyable than their other albums, Riot on an Empty Street, or the ironically named Quiet is the New Loud.

Contributers to the album include Royksopp, Ladytron, Four Tet, Riton, Alfie, David Whitaker, Erot each one of them adds a flair to the song. Royksopp flourishes the song "I don't know what I can save your from" with a looping electronic bass line. But the most noticeable treatment is probably Evil Tordevil's treatment of "Leaning against a wall" which is turned into an almost second-wave (two tone) ska homage. It isn't all electronica though. "Toxic Girl" is given a full backing orchestration that adds a depth to the lyrics. Failure is given a new sound that conjures up memory of Burt Bacharach songs. Little Kids is given a discordant background that make it seem imperative (and there I go, what does imperative music sound like?)

I have said to friends in the past that remix albums are to be used sparingly by bands. Lovely Wife, for example, has a remix album made up entirely of U2's song "Lemon". I personally can't stand that many variations of a song and after a while I find myself wondering, what's it all for? But Versus explains it for me. Remixes add a new dimension to your favorite songs, or your favorite artists, it is a way to listen to something with new ears, and in my case, like it for the first time.

Versus is an excellent album. I would categorize it under the heading of Run Don't Walk to get it. But only if you love Pop music.

"Faster we'll divide all the sense into tiny parcels are you hoping it's tense, girl?" -Architecture in Helsinki

2008-04-04T14:14:00.001-04:00

I’m a huge, no gigantic, fan of a character driven story. I work in a theater because I feel that by and large playwrights have to give you something to care about in their stories and the set, costumes and tone of the play are out of their control. But I also don’t like sacrificing an entire evening to the theater so I am an equally large fan of fast paced drama. Martin McDonagh is about as good as they come when it comes to fast-paced character driven stories and the movie “In Bruges”, which he penned, is a near hit for a what an art house flick should be. Near hit is the key though.

Martin McDonagh is a genius at making despicable characters that you can’t help like. His drama is gritty and faced paced and when it is done you feel assaulted in the best possible way. Sadly I don’t think it translates to screen in quite the same way, but it is fifty-one percent good movie and forty-nine percent Aw-shucks that was almost awesome.

The story is about two hit men who are sent to Bruges, Belgium after what we are led to believe is a botched job in England. Bruges is beautifully shot and framed in as a character in the story. The other-worldliness of it is really something else. But it is the attention to the character of Bruges that detracts from the performances of Brendan Gleeson as Ken, the elder statesman of the two; and Colin Farrell as the young buck Ray. Which is sad because this is probably Colin Farrell’s best work to date. The days of S.W.A.T., The Recruit and Phone Booth where his short sighted, often one dimensional, characters were pretty but none too deep, seem to be behind him and that is a great thing. Farrell did a wonderful job of capturing the arrogance and remorse of a young man who is in way over his head. The moments of intimacy between him and Gleeson were masterfully written, acted out, and shot. But it was the conclusions of these scenes that I found distracting.

There were some great shots of Bruges that should have been throwaway shots; but were, inexplicably, given equal weight. There was one particular moment of intimacy were Ray and Ken are talking about their reason for being in Bruges, Ken’s role in it and Ray’s attempt at solace and then we end with a view of a swan. Really? A swan?

And that was the problem I had with it. The throwaways had way too much importance in the movie. They broke up some remarkable dialog in an uncomfortable way, that didn’t seem intended McDonagh is renowned for making the audience squirm in the seat as his character play out their frustrations. There are some great exchanges between the character Katorian, Tupalski and Ariel in The Pillowman that left the audience itching for more. But Bruges lacked that, principally because we never got worked up to the fevered pitch that produces the responses.

I just never felt invested in Ken and Ray, and if anything I felt the saddest for Farrell’s love interest. Which is sort of sad because she occupies all of fifteen minutes of film.

Here is the worst part. This movie is still one of the five best movies I have seen in the trailing twelve months. Is it spectacular? Not really. It is solid from start to finish. Were my expectations a little high for the writer’s first screenplay? It would seem so.

Pesky expectations rear their head again.

"Faster we'll divide all the sense into tiny parcels are you hoping it's tense, girl?" -Architecture in Helsinki

"I don't look back in anger because there is nothing really anyone can change..." Ike Reilly Assassination

2008-03-06T15:18:00.004-05:00

"The argument that we are making is that the people of our respective states voted. They cast that precious right. They made their voice heard, and those delegates who represent them should be seated at both conventions," Crist said on CNN's "American Morning."

That quote came from Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Regarding the exclusion of Florida (and Michigan's) Democratic Party delegates at the upcoming Democratic party convention.

I got my ass chewed out by a co-worker the other day because I opted to not vote in the primary elections here in Rhode Island on Tuesday. Now before anybody starts to ream my ass again let me explain why I did not vote in a largely meaningless election (did you like that backhanded dig?).

I am not a member of either political party, mostly out of protest because I firmly believe that their dumb-ass partisan bullshit does more to harm the United States than it does to help. I am also fairly disgusted with the whole process at this point and I am not excluding any of the Democrats or Republicans from my scathing contempt. I sort of half wish that we could hit a giant reset button (ala video games) and start the whole Sim Government game over.

But back to the point. The Primary Elections are a machination by the political parties to help them determine who they think their best candidate is (i.e. most loyal, likable, credible, agenda pushing). There is no place in the constitution that calls for Primary Elections, or advocates for them or sets up rules governing them; which is why the RNC and DNC have such starkly different systems for electing their candidates. So with that in mind. I am also not a member of a great many other clubs or parties.

I do not belong to the NRA, Green Peace, PETA, The Elks Club, Knights of Columbus, or the VFW. Now out of respect for those institutions I don't for a second think that I have any business helping them select a chapter chair or national service representative. So why in the FUCK do people insist on making my feel shitty about not voting in a stupid Democrat or Republican Club contest. Because realistically this is all we are talking about. The DNC and RNC, both clubs I absolutely detest for the damage they are doing the nation, have somehow duped the public into thinking that it is their civic duty to go out and cast a vote to help them determine who the best candidate is.

And the irony for this election is that Obama and Clinton are walking into a disaster because the delegates from Michigan and Florida are going to be excluded.

I honestly wish that going forward the RNC and DNC would just draw straws and tell me who, from their silly hierarchy, is going go be running that way news stories about Mosques and schools blowing-up in Iraq, and Military recruiting centers in Times Square being bombed would make the front page of the internet news sources; and maybe of a shot at the "top half of the fold".

Christ Almighty I have been reading so much British news to find out what is happening in the WORLD that I am starting to spell colour, utilise and specialise, much to the dismay of my employers and friends.

Folks, the Primaries a farce. Get revved up for the real election; not this feel-good charade that the morons that lead the government backward are spoon-feeding us.

There I feel tonnes better.

"I may not be a perfect soul, But I can learn self-control, So pardon me..." -Weezer

2008-03-06T09:00:00.003-05:00

I found myself typing an email to a friend of mine today and wanting to say something that needed a qualifier; in this case it was, "I hope this doesn't sound too inappropriate." Then I sort of realized that if I have to qualify a statement like that then maybe I should just keep that thought to myself.

And that my friends is growth. On a personal level at any rate.

I still say wildly inappropriate things on a pretty regular basis but to be able to recognize that something like that is mind boggling to me. I wonder where the next bit of growth will come.

On a totally unrelated note but something that has been on mind lately. I love Amie Street. And again I feel like I am a day late to the show. What a great site. It has loads of legal free music, from bands that might be on the verge of breaking out and then you can be the guy that says, "Oh yeah Flibberdy Band, I used to listen them back before they were a Top 40 band and signed with XYZ Major Label." And isn't that what every music snob really really wants?

The selection of the music there is what I find the most mind boggling. I have no qualms with stating that my musical preference is for what I would call prog/indie rock; but I am using that term to encompass a lot of sub-genres like power-pop and pop rock. But Amie Street has Reggae, Rock, Alternative, Hip Hop, Country, Folk. It is a pretty diverse listing of music. And their pricing is amazing.

The pricing scheme involves a pretty amazing model where albums become more expensive as people buy them. So a band like Vampire Weekend (one that I have been listening to a lot) starts off at free and after a time becomes 98 cents a song. Although I have only seen one album that was that expensive.

“There is no glue to hold you…” –XTC

2008-03-04T15:02:00.001-05:00

The teaser tagline for Doug Liman’s new venture is “Anywhere is possible” and in this case it is the literal and metaphoric truth. The movie, which I had very high hopes for walking in the door, took a huge leap and came up very very short of its mark.

The story revolves around Hayden Christiansen’s trouble youth David Rice. He discovers, through precarious circumstances at school, that he has the ability to teleport any place that he can imagine: which we find out includes Tokyo, Paris, London, Rome, bank vaults, and Ann Arbor’s Public Library system.

The story itself is pretty flimsy. David moves, or rather leaps, from home after falling through the ice of the local river and then dodging his angry father—Classic “that-guy-actor Michael Rooker”—before a would be confrontation about tracking water through the house. He leaves without so much as a trace and we see in a montage how he kept himself occupied over the last eight years.

We are shown a scene where he robs a bank and then we are shown the villain, Samuel L. Jackson’s Roland. But this is where the flimsiness is exposed, and pretty ruthlessly. We are led to believe that the David is a hero and Roland is a villain or anti-hero. But there is never enough in the story to support the actions of the characters. We are told that David leaves IOU’s for people after he robs them, but we never seeing him paying them back. We are told that Roland is a psychotic zealot but outside of him killing one Jumper that we know nothing about we aren’t shown that he is anything more than a tenacious cop whose catch phrase seems to be that “nobody but G-d should have this power.” All of the main characters share this flat two-dimensional aspect. It is like watching a movie of caricatures rather than characters

There is a hot chick in the movie (she takes up most of the story shot in Rome) and she is the old love interest. And that is pretty much her whole role in the story; she is an excuse to show off some flashy special effects and an occasional shot of token hot girl in underwear.

The story of the movie is so flimsy that talking about anything else gives away too much and I don’t want spoil anything for the poor fools that are going to pay to see this movie.

But I am going to mention, from my point of view, the most important thing in movies. That is a continuity of suspension of disbelief. What happens in Jumper is David falls through a sheet of ice. He then disappears without saying good-bye to anybody. Fair enough, he clearly was a troubled lad; nobody liked him, who can’t appreciate that sentiment of wanting to escape at any price.

But then he goes back.

And walks into a bar where he finds out that his ex-love interest is working. They have some banter, a small fist fight ensues between him and his old high school rival, and then out of nowhere the hot chick agrees to fly to Rome with a guy who was last seen falling through a sheet of ice on a frozen river. She may have said to herself that he wasn’t dead, but I don’t think for a second that a smart girl decides on a whim to fly to Rome with someone she hasn’t seen in eight years.

Yes, I am willing to believe that people can teleport, or shoot laser beams out of their eyes, or grow to incredible proportions those are all physical things that are easy to bypass in your minds eye (they are also things that I have wanted to do for a great many years). But there is something immutable in the responses of humans to certain situations. And if you are going to throw in a plot twist as shaky as the reconnection of a troubled youth and the hot chick he adored and then have the foundation of the rest of the story be built on her willowy shoulders you need a stronger story to begin with.

It may seem like I am really down on this movie, and I think that would be a fair assessment but it wasn’t all=-bad. Jamie Bell, who was inspiring in Billy Elliot, has a great turn as an equally tenacious jumper-zealot when it comes to the destruction of the arch-enemies. Samuel L. Jackson is also good as Roland and I was really struck with the way those two really buoyed up the rest of the movie.

The effects are also worthy of mention. And I will say this: Doug Liman knows how to make action exciting. He did it with “Bourne Identity” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, two movies that kept me on the edge of seat through multiple viewings. He does the same with “Jumper” but it is just polish on a terd; although, again, it is glorious polish. There is a segment in which Bell’s Griffin jumps a London Double Decker bus into the desert. There was a lot of near-miss style diving and amazing effects but it just isn’t enough. And I think it should reiterate just how important a strong script is.

Final judgment for Jumper is this: It isn’t all-bad; there are some funny lines and a couple of performances that are worth the price of admission at a matinee or a super Tuesday discount bargain night. If you have a super high powered home theater you might just wait to see it on Blu-Ray or DVD. But please for the love of G-d don’t see this for any more than seven dollars. I have a supremely high tolerance for crap and I was hurt, spiritually, when I saw this one.

"Who let the dogs out" - Baha Men

2008-03-02T22:41:00.002-05:00

I was walking home from work on Sunday night and a white Toyota Matrix or Pontiac Vibe drove past me and one of the occupants -- a girl judging by the voice -- barked at me.

Is that what kids do for fun these days? Drive around the Theater District barking at people on Sunday.

Sad. Just Sad.

No Pithy song lyrics just sadness

2008-02-29T09:22:00.001-05:00

Will somebody please tell me how our political system isn't a complete fucking trainwreck.

On CNN.com I read an article about the Tennessee RNC using the name Barack Hussein Obama in a press release about protection of the state of Israel. Then they said that The Left (because it is a proper noun) is always diverting attention from the issues by nit-picking the GOP's press releases.

But The Left aren't excused Obama and Clinton have both spent two week taking potshots over the others inattention to the issues and running negative campaigns.

The irony to me is that everybody is delivering empty promises. Because they are selling us ideas. If your candidate gets elected they are going to be appointing commissions to draft proposals to look at something, because that is how Government (and I mean it in the worst possible way) works.

We are doomed. I have totally lost my faith in the political system in the US. I would be willing to, at this point, take a walk down I-40 and pick one person at random to be president. I think they would stand as good a chance as anybody running for the job of not fucking up the country worse than it is.

In fact... maybe I should run for President. Why not? Right? I could start a Facebook campaign and a blog (done and done) and run for the office in four years with no experience and no bullshit. I am a true Washington outsider. I would veto every fucking bill that didn't do exactly what it said it was going to do. I would get together a group of doctors and find out how to fix the broken-ass, shitty, medical system we have now. And that is just the start, if you want ideas, man I have them. Ideas out the wazoo.

So start thinking about V. for President in 2012. My campaign slogan is going to be "Americans: leading by example" I will work on my platform and post it piece-meal over the next couple of years.

Hahaha... yeah right.

"Please don't hold this over my head, let's just say enough's been said, Enough is enough" -Dance Hall Crashers

2008-02-18T15:11:00.002-05:00

[Quick Note: This post was written in word three weeks ago. I was trying to make it "perfect" but have given up on that. The best I can hope for right now is readable, and I am not even promising that.]

There is a subtle difference between films and movies. I don’t know that I can explain the difference but I can tell you that I recognize them when I see them. I think that films attempt to explain something about the human condition through a visual medium using character driven stories and advanced cinematic techniques that are either time-tested or new and experimental. (I just made all that shit up.)

Movies show us tits, explosions, car chases, and sports. Which is not to say that a film can’t have all of those things in it. What it means for me is that if I can only remember that there a semi-naked chick laying on the hood of a yellow Camaro and I can’t remember how she got there, or why there are creepy robots standing around her… than it is probably a movie.

I also know that I am infinitely forgiving of bad movies, and absolutely ruthless on bad films. Great films move me to tears or rend my soul, great movies make me want to change my jog: becoming either a super-spy, a robot that turns into a car or an amnesiac that can run for a half mile before his hands start shaking.

The point that I am getting at is that there is a time and place for both of them.

In an effort to close out the reviews that I promised my sister I am going to tackle three movies Juno, Cloverfield and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Juno is a film, Cloverfield is I think a shitty film and ITNOTK:ADST is a shitty movie. So I will get to establish a good litmus review that we can go back to later.

This is going to be riddled with spoilers, if you haven’t seen any of these movies and plan on seeing them sometime in the future turn away now. Don’t continue if you want to be surprised.

Juno: A Good Film

Quick recap of the story: Juno is a 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. This is a critical point for all good films. They have to be a simple story. Movies, I think, can get away with an overly complex story line because in the end you can drop in a deus ex machina and explain away the unexplained then wheel the angel back up and resume; bad movies use this all the time.

So in essence we have a girl and three spheres of influence around her: the father, the family and the potential adoptive parents. I think that this movie, at its core, is about the way sell the maturity of our youth short. Juno, the pregnant teen, is strangely reticent of the prospect of being a mother. She seems to grasp the magnitude of her situation but only in small doses.

First it is a glib phone call to the abortion clinic and the meeting of a schoolmate outside the clinic who reminds that babies in their first three months have heartbeats and fingernails. This sets up a hilarious scene where Juno is driven from the clinic by the sounds of fingernails grating against jeans, taping on tables, clicking, being picked, etc. It is this bit of humanity that we see first. Juno is perfectly willing to go and have the abortion until the banality of fingernails seems to take root and she balks.

The next growth phase comes in telling Bleeker, the boyfriend, and her family. If I had to make a notice or a pitch for any film casting agent it would be this: ANY MOVIE OR FILM CAN BE IMPROVED BY CASTING J.K. SIMMONS AND OR ALLISON JANNEY. They steal every single scene they are in.

The adoptive parents are interesting, particularly because of their relationship. It becomes very obvious (to me at least) that Vanessa and Mark have issues; but it isn’t done with histrionics. It is brilliantly portrayed with glances and posture and intonation. I have never liked Jennifer Garner but I thought she was amazing in this and I would see her again. Jason Bateman is another one of those guys—like Paul Rudd—who I see and think, “Damn I love that guy in movies.”

Through the movie we see Juno grow apart from Bleeker and closer to Mark and the mature recognition that something is wrong hits her and pushes her to the final moment of maturity that sort of make the whole movie come together.

Visually—or maybe I mean cinematically—the director has made some great choices in the look of the film. Juno’s house is homey and messy, the house is run by an HVAC repairman and it shows. Mark and Vanessa live in a sterile McMansion, a starter home for a yuppie couple. Mark makes advertising jingles and you get a real sense of his discomfort right away; he has a playroom that figure prominently. Mark is obviously a man torn by his old life and his new life and with fatherhood looming you really get the sense dark times are ahead.

And the great part is that they are. Juno’s whole impetus for giving the baby up for adoption to Mark and Vanessa is that they are going to be loving and more stable parents then she could be at sixteen. The adoptive parents relationship starts to fall apart and when it does, Juno has to make the hardest decision a 16 year old in the third trimester of pregnancy could have to make.

There are a couple of shots that individually I really liked; the recurring use of a recliner out on the grass was great. Nice juxtaposition for me of inside and outside stuff, and for me it really accentuated the way that Juno dealt with the problems she was facing. This might have been one of those things where I am reading too much into an object, but a film teacher I had once said that if something shows up in a movie twice it is coincidence; three times and it becomes a symbol.

There was a funny focus on the legs of the characters that I found amusing. I am not sure what I am supposed to make of it all but I did chuckle through most of the movie anytime legs showed up.

Jason Reitman has done a magnificent job taking a precocious script by Diablo Cody and turning into a fantastic examination of the decision making process.

Cloverfield: A shitty movie

I am going to keep this pretty short because I don’t have a lot of positive stuff to talk about it.

I am giving this one a shitty film classification because it uses a gimmick (in this case we are lead to believe that the movie is an eye witness recording taken from a camcorder) to try and tell a story that is too big for it.

The story revolves around a group of people who are celebrating Rob’s new job, and imminent departure to Tokyo. During the course of the opening twenty minutes we are told the following things about the characters. Rob has a brother and best friend. Rob has a girl named Beth that he is in love with, the brother has a girlfriend, and the friend, named Hud is infatuated with a girl named Marlena. There is a falling out between Beth and Rob, then some time passes (I will get to that in a second) and some shit goes down in the form of a gigantic monster that commences to level New York City.

The story is simple, right? Get the six characters out of harms way. Wrong. The story is fucking weak.

Originally when I saw this advertised I had somehow been lead to believe that this movie would be shot via the handy cam effect but that it would be shot from a bunch of varying perspectives. Let’s face it, if you are going to be in the midst of a six story monster attack in New York your exposure is going to be limited to about five or six minutes total. Then you will either be dead or out of the line of fire.

So when I had to endure 80 minutes of Hud’s shaky camera work and the ridiculous dialog I was disappointed.

Then the device, the home movie thing, gets tired. Hud turns the camera off and on always at just the right time when something exciting is going to happen. The battery seems to last at least eight or nine hours but admittedly it is only 80 minutes of film so okay, maybe I set aside my disbelief and roll with that. There is an attack and about three times where Hud is knocked to the ground and nothing happens to the camera.

There are also some location issues that I had problems with. New York is too easy a city to base a story around. Information about it is ubiquitous and so I don’t cut a director a lot of slack when it comes to filming a story about NY.

The other issues basically revolve around the distance between things and the establishment of time in the film. Robs apartment is within ten short blocks of the Woolworth building and a short walk to the Brooklyn Bridge. But when the bridge collapses they start walking to “Beth’s Apartment” up in Columbus Circle and when they end up in a subway after five or six minutes of walking they are in Spring Street station, which is about fifteen or twenty minute walk from Brooklyn Bridge.

Then some nebulous amount of time passes while our characters trek, in the dark, unlit subway, with tanks, Special Forces and six story monsters rampaging up above, up to 59th Street after an attack by a weird group of spiders that fall off of the big bad monster.

Then they rescue Beth.

Then, THANKFULLY, the movie ends.

I have had this conversation with so many people lately that I have invented a Cloverfield qualifier for movies. If you back out the artistic endeavor, Cloverfield isn’t a bad movie, it is like Blair Witch Project; but with the artistic endeavor—the use of the camera, the desire to show the “power of love” (or the stupidity of infatuation) the movie falls on its face.

It could have been awesome; but for me it didn’t live up to its own hype.

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale: Shitty Movie.

There are certain things that a movie ought to have to be marketable: a story, some editing, a couple of actors who give a shit about the story and a director who is willing to box the critics that constantly pan his movies. This movie had one of those.

But I loved it. I can’t tell if my amore for this POS comes from the fact that I watched it with Lovely Wife and my friend the Good Doctor--and so the running commentary that was being tossed back and forth between the three of us was worth the price of admission—or, if I just love it because this movie was the worst movie I have seen since the last Uwe Boll movie I saw.

Speaking of Bloodrayne, Name of the King has a lot in common with it. Both are based on video games, both feature Kristianna Loken, both featured aging former mobster movie guys (Michael Madsen and Ray Liotta), both movies were absolutely abysmal by every possible measure.

NOTK also employs a bunch of former A minus-list actors and that contributes to the greatness of it suckiness. Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, John Rhys-Davies, Leelee Sobieski all must have had bills to pay when they agreed to this one; or, Uwe Boll is the coolest guy in the whole world and just a gas to work with (I am going to believe that one).

I can’t really get into why this movie is so bad, because it is bad from start to finish. But I can provide an example:

In one scene our hero, Jason Statham, runs up behind a house that forms the center of a shot. The camera lingers on the house for about a full seven Mississippi count before cutting to the next shot, which is far to long to be showing a brown house in a brown field.

Two shots later, Ray Liotta is in the middle of being Ray Liotta looking like Liberace and before he has the time to breath after the period in the sentence the scene is cut to Statham doing gymnastics or something.

If there was an editor (and the credits listed one) I am pretty sure his name is a clever anagram for “yeah right, we didn’t hire an editor” in German.

Look, this movie is not for the faint of heart. It is horrible. But if you can have a sense of humor about it and recognize a great piece of shit for what it is, then it is worth the price of a matinee. But my advice is to take a friend who is clever enough to make you laugh.

"This house is empty know, there's nothing I can do..." -Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach

2008-02-13T23:07:00.001-05:00

Watching snippets of the Roger Clemens congressional fiasco is making me sick to my stomach.

I can't believe that the 535 idiots that make up our voice in the world have nothing better to do than to sit around and talk to sports people about cheating.

Christ's sake. Maybe nobody in Washington is paying attention but there are a couple of small wars going on in the Middle East. The economy is teetering on the brink of disaster because we have an economy based on mythical income and credit leverage. We are graduating kids from colleges that are barely literate and can't point to their own national capital on a map.

We have homeless people on the street, people who can't go to the doctor when they are sick and children that are malnourished. And the government is letting us down by wasting time on a 40-something year old pitcher who may or may not have taken steroids.

Shit-balls. I feel like I am taking crazy pills here. Am I the only person that is pissed off about this. With all the shit that is wrong in the USA why are we wasting time on self governing sports corporations. They will police themselves or they will get arrested for trafficing drugs.

Although, if you really think about it, this is just further proof that the US is losing the war on drugs. If you are to believe some of the ex-players than 60-70% of Major League Baseball is taking steroids which are mostly illegal. Maybe it is truly America's game.

It just seems like bullshit grandstanding to me. The politicians hold these big televised committees so that they can get some face time and then turn around and say they did something during their elected term.

G-d just thinking about this is making me sick.

"My hands felt just like two balloons..." -Pink Floyd

2008-02-03T22:37:00.001-05:00

Giants win the superbowl... Woops. Oh well.

Man, I don't think I have ever seen anybody get hit as much as Tom Brady got hit. Seriously. WOW!

My one hope at this point is that Randy Moss doesn't come out and say something stupid. I really hope that he signs a big contract, stays in New England and they come back and win a Super Bowl next year. Against the Giants. Great game.

"He's got all kinds of time..." -Fountains of Wayne

2008-02-03T11:24:00.001-05:00

Today is Superbowl Sunday. I am a Pats fan, have been since I was a kid growing up in Southern New Mexico. Sounds weird, right? Well the family that grew up across the street from me were from Rye Beach, NH so I spent a lot of time watching sports at their house.

Anyway, I have a couple of thoughts about the game. First off, Pats will probably win. Couple of things that will play in their favor. One, is that they are playing a game against a Manning and the opposing quarterback isn't named Grossman this time. If any other quarterback had played for Chicago Peyton would still be winnless in big games and I stand by that.

The Pats have the experience in the big games, the Giants don't.

I have heard a lot of people say that the Pats were lucky to beat the Chargers. Well the Giants were lucky to beat the Cowboys and the Packers. Both games came down to the final plays and I would say more than anything that stupidity on the part of the quarterbacks for the other teams led to the wins (Romo threw up a duck that was intercepted in the endzone, and Favre, in overtime, threw an interception that was converted into a field goal later). The fact that the Giants kicker FINALLY kicked the field goal on the third try is a testament more to his tenacity than his skill.

Last thing, I have heard a bunch of people say that the Pats aren't as good as they were at the beginning of the season. Maybe I am over thinking this one, but I am going to give Belichick a lot of credit here. He is not a stupid guy. I will stand by this opinion under oath, should Arlen Specter (R, PA) want to waste more Government time and have me interviewed by the Judiciary Committee.

Here is my opinion about the high ankle sprain. What was the big number one news story about the Patriots before the game with the Chargers? Anybody remember? It was Randy Moss and this girl down in Tampa. How many stories have come out about it since the day that Brady was filmed with the ankle sprain? I don't know but I would wager that outside of Tampa it is somewhere between zero and four. My theory: There was absolutely nothing wrong with Brady. Being the team guy that he is he put on an air cast, went for a walk outside his supermodel girlfriend's house and let the idiot talking heads take care of the rest. Show up late to a couple of practices and voila, the team is focused the opponents are confused and nobody is talking about Randy Moss.

I also think that the Pats underplayed the last six games to make for shitty tape to analyze. Most of the way the other teams prepare for their opponents is through tape, right? So if you give them tape that isn't very good, then you take away their ability to prepare. I have always thought that Brady and Belichick underplayed the Colts, just so that they wouldn't be able to use it against them in the big games.

Now I don't think that Tom Coughlin and the Giants are going to be a walk in the park but I don't think that a team of rookies, and inexperienced big game players are going to be enough to beat a team that is willing to be self-sacrificing in the extreme to win.

We will see what happens I guess. A woman at work asked me who was going to win; my guess was whoever scored more points. I stand by that too.

"All the women who are independent; Throw your hands up at me" -Destiny's Child

2008-01-28T22:03:00.001-05:00

I read an article on CNN's political blogger that the New York Chapter of the National Organization of Women feels abandoned and betrayed by Ted Kennedy after his endorsement of Barack Obama.

I am not out of my mind, I hope, when I announce that I find it hilarious that they felt compelled to comment on a stodgy old white dude backing a hip young black dude. Dude is the operative word here.

If Nancy Pelosi came out and backed Barack Obama I would say they should be upset, betrayed and abandoned. But it isn't Pelosi, it is FUCKING TED KENNEDY. This guy, as they pointed out, was late to the table on Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave Act and you are shocked and surprised that he endorsed a dude.

I don't know how to say this. But NOW should have come out and said, "Hey look at that, a fucking guy, endorsing yet another fucking guy to be president. Figures. Guess we will have to do this one on our own. Come on Ladies." Then if they could throw on some bandanas and toss a rivet gun over their shoulder it would make it awesomer.

Personally I don't like Hillary Clinton; not because of her being a woman (I voted for Libby Dole in the Republican Primary when she ran). I am not voting for her because she sent her ex-president husband (who I also voted for) out against the opposition like a fucking bull dog.

If Hillary is supposed to be a strong-minded woman candidate she can't fall back on her Hubby as the shin-kicking heel. She has to get out there and make me want to vote for her. I liked Bill Clinton but I don't want him to be president again, I want something new and exciting. And she has to reel him in if she is going to make me believe she is it.

What NOW should be doing is making Hillary a viable candidate without Bill hawking her like a cheap rolex on 59th and 6th, and get out there empowering and activating the women in the country to vote.

I mean Christ, Ted Kennedy? I can't believe anybody honestly thought that a Kennedy was going to endorse her; he is a Kennedy and they aren't renowned for their... progressive women's rights stances.

"Ain't that news, man aint that news?" -Sam Cooke

2008-01-22T10:05:00.001-05:00

What does it say about me that I peruse the CNN.com splash page and the news item that sucks me in is that the Oscars have announced the nominees.

In a follow up to my recent post on Atonement I am delighted that Chris Hampton received the nomination for Atonement. What a gem of a movie. Also I love that Saorise Ronan got a nomination for best supporting actress.

"I'm sorry; Two words I always think..." -Feist

2008-01-20T12:08:00.000-05:00

I suppose that before I get into the meat and potatoes of the post here I have to give a shout out to my sister Lauryn. She has goaded me into posting a review of a couple of movies that I have seen by telling me that she likes the way I write them. So blame her for the glut of writing that will be focused on the movies I have seen over the last couple of days.

I have at various points in the history of this blog posted up movie reviews. I have expressed my disdain for over the years for movies that butcher the literature of my youth, making needless edits and changes and thereby inexorably changing the story and robbing it of its magic. I have extolled the virtues of good old-fashioned mindless entertainment and I have given a review that I think I filed under the heading “Good But Who Gives a Shit.”

The common thread for all of these is expectation; because when you get right down to it expectation shapes the way I view movies. I can remember really not liking “Children of Men” because in my heart I wanted more from the movie than it was capable of delivering. By the same token, I look back fondly on movies like "Transformers" (and G-d am I saying this out loud?) "Spice Girls" because they met my very very low expectations for the film. But I would never say that "Children of Men" is worse than "Spice Girls".

Since we have a lot of ground to cover let’s get to it:

First up is Atonement; book by Ian McEwan, film directed by Joe Wright, Screenplay by Christopher Hampton.

I am a slow reader by nature. I am a very comprehensive reader as well. The end result is that I don’t spend a lot of time rereading books because I have a very good memory for them. I recently reread Susan Cooper’s, Dark Is Rising and was surprised at how much I still remembered about the story, even though it has been twenty years since I read it. Ian McEwan’s Atonement was a very difficult read for me. It took me all in about a month to get through. Not because the words were too big or difficult; but because every single page was wrought with emotional turmoil and passion. (Now admittedly I was also in the middle of Christmas Carol so I was working six, sometimes seven, days a week and found very little spare time to just sit and read.)

What McEwan does so beautifully is pack the pages full of description, which is so hard to do. I would love to call myself an earnest writer and one of the things that I have been told over and over again is describe, don’t tell. McEwan describes, in every sense of the word, the story so well.

The book itself is a little over 350 pages and divided into three parts. The first part is told from the perspective of an eleven or twelve year old girl, Briony; her sister, Cecilia, and the maid’s son, Robbie Turner. (Cecilia and Robbie are ten years older than Briony.)

The first part captured with amazing eloquence that moment in time when children became young adults. In Briony’s case, the innocence of her youth is chipped early in the day and by the end of the night completely shattered and this sets the whole story into motion. McEwan captures, through brilliant transitions in voice, the seeming gaps in maturity between the three principal characters. When we are told Briony’s story the word choices are often grander than absolutely necessary, but then that is how a twelve-year-old surrounded by adults might interpret language so it works; whereas, when Robbie’s story is being told it is kept tidy, the story really reflecting the son of the Charlady in the house. The first part culminates in a closing chapter that is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal parts. The palpable anger that I felt for Briony was astonishing to me – and I am well aware of my own book-reading flaws, which include, amongst other things, laughing out loud in public at the humorous parts.

The second part was the most difficult for me to get through. First because it the story of Robbie Turner’s evacuation from France during World War II. And second because it is just an incredibly descriptive section. I found myself having to go and reread whole sections because I was lost in the imagery that McEwan creates. It was the imagery that bogged me down and for good reason. In the story Robbie is marching to Dunkirk where the Royal Navy is evacuating over 300,000 people. What McEwan does is to make the reader very aware of the pace of this march. The whole process in the book takes maybe three days, and in the story it is almost a continuous 125 pages of incredibly lush-bordering on poetic-description of the French countryside, the horror and atrocity of war, and the fragile camaraderie that exists between soldiers.

There is a particularly gut wrenching scene where Robbie is trying to help a mother and her son avoid a German strafe and bomb mission on the retreating British forces. He is left with only a crater in the ground as the mother and son are stricken with fear and stop running.

It is the horror of war being captured through the eyes of someone whose life has gone so horribly wrong that makes you weep the hardest for the character. You are left with a real sense that Robbie is a hero, somebody who really is a good person. And not for personal gain, he does it because he, quite simply, doesn’t know any other way.

It is with part three that we get to the real essence of what this book is really about. As the name suggestions the book is about the reconciliation of grievous error. In this case a twelve-year-old lets her imagination run away with her and, in an effort be an adult before she is ready, ruin the lives of both Cecilia and Robbie. The third part joins Briony during her Parishioner year at a hospital where she is filling the role of Nightingale Nurse. This section is so hectic and the action jumps from one activity (or patient) to the next with such abandon that I was really struck by the speed that Briony must have been moving; speed that was by design and effort to outrun the shame that she felt now that she was a little older and understood what the implications of her actions are.

The thing that really sold me on the book is that it really is a heart-wrenching story. I can’t quite describe it, but anybody that has exes, or siblings or parents ought to read this so that as a minimum they understand the potential consequences their actions might have.

(I was trying to come up with a pithy way to segue into the comparison between book and movie, but alas five deleted paragraphs and some lame idioms have made me resort to a juggernaut approach.)

I made the mistake of seeing the movie first. I started reading the book, put it down, saw the movie, and then finished the book a full month and a week later. I think that the book would read faster with out the imagery and the criticism that I have of the movie.

The thing is though, that my criticism of the movie isn’t that large. First I pictured Cecilia to be more homely than Keira Knightley is capable of being, and second I thought that Romola Garai, who plays the older Briony, looked 25, and not 18. There you have it; criticism concluded.

Sometimes, when literature is being turned into a movie, I think moviemakers tend to want to change the story to make it fit the camera lens; examples of this include The DaVinci Code; The Dark is Rising, Golden Compass to name a few. Each of the examples I gave had different aspects of their story changed to make it different and change the story; in Da Vinci Code the book the church was not a bad guy, in the movie The Church was the antagonist acting through Opus Dei to thwart the Priory of Scion and Robert Langdon; Dark is Rising was an abomination and they changed the story so much that I think it is better to just pretend that it never happened; but I did make a post about it and you can find it here if you have the fortitude. Golden Compass, same thing read it here towards the bottom.

Joe Wright and Chris Hampton didn’t change a thing in "Atonement" until the epilogue that makes up the chapter titled London, 1999. And you know what? They nailed the important part and got the information to me in a way that changed very little of the story.

Here are the things that stood out to me in the movie, James McAvoy is going to be a super star; at least that is my hope. This is a guy who, in span of one movie, played three very different characters and he did it in a way that had me believing that he had gone through the life altering circumstances of the character in the book. I suppose that is what acting is all about, right? But why is it so remarkable that he did it so well and Tom Cruise keeps throwing up a regurgitated version of himself from Jerry Maguire every time he makes a movie. Maybe it was his youthful exuberance? Also I think it would astonishing to not see Saoirse Ronan or Romola Garai in the future.

One of the best transitions in the book for me was Briony’s growth from the creepy eleven-year-old who is treated like an adult but is very obviously a child, to the eighteen-year-old version that sees, with startling clarity, the errors of her past.

This transition is really well captured in the casting of Ronan and the aforementioned Garai. Ronan captures the creepy intensity of Briony at 13 as she wanders through the events, with her prejudices and fears really driving the way, until the act that cements the story. Garai has a striking innocent quality to her appearance and a great tone of voice, she is able to really exude apology with her eyes and I am still haunted by her first scene.

Quality of acting aside though, the director and cinematographer really are the stars of the show. Ian McEwan packs so many visuals into the novel and the filmmakers here really got to the heart of it and captured the book on film. The scene of two figures at the fountain, filming in the house, the march to Dunkirk, the hospital were all done with such great attention to the words that McEwan used to describe the environment—whether it is heat, or dryness, or the exhaustion that come from a long march—that it cemented this movie as a great translation.

The epitome of this for me is a scene that I have heard simply called “The Long Shot”. The scene in the book involves Robbie Turners march from somewhere in Northern France to the British Expeditionary Forces withdrawal point at Dunkirk. The text is probably twenty-five pages of marching, avoiding bombs, being in the army and survival. The Long Shot hit me like a can of film up aside the head.

The thing that makes it so remarkable is that you don’t realize what is happening until you get half way through it and then you realize, “HOLY CROW, THIS IS ALL THE SAME SHOT!” The whole shot takes about fifteen minutes, maybe a little more and it covers the walk up to Bray Dunes by Robbie Turner and Corporals Mace and Nettle.

I have read that they were under budget constraints, which is why they did it this way. Whatever the reason it works. I left the movie "Atonement" and spent the day wondering how the book was written because there was so little dialog for a large junk of the film. I remember thinking about the line that divides filmmakers and moviemakers and trying to place Atonement into a compartment that made sense: is it a film or movie, is it good or bad? I don’t think that I was able to place the magnitude of my feelings for the movie in their proper place until I had finished reading the book; now that I have, I am more appreciative of the masterwork of Joe Wright.

This is a movie that everybody who loves film should see, if for no other reason than to see the cinematography of it. It is far and away the most beautiful movie I saw last year.

"My stupid mouth has got me in trouble..." -John Mayer

2008-01-17T21:51:00.001-05:00

Leave it to an honest mistake to spark a big stupid fire.

Seriously, did Golfweek really go out and put a noose on the cover of their magazine? You know I totally support the rights of a person to make a mistake using a word on the air in the moment when your job is to provide color banter.

But a premeditated cover designed to incite more animosity in an already touchy subject is just reprehensibly irresponsible, and it deserves a judicious response.

I really think that the publisher, the editor-in-chief and the graphic designer of the magazine should lose their jobs on this one. I think that the magazine should lose a healthy chunk of their advertising revenue and if people boycotted and picketed the offices it wouldn't bother me at all. What they did was stupid.

"Out from the kitchen to the bedroom to the hallway; Your friend apologizes, he could see it my way" -TMBG

2008-01-11T09:47:00.000-05:00

I am firmly entrenched in the belief that things are out of hand when a TV personality on the Golf Channel is suspended, and her network is being threatened unless they fire her.

Al Sharpton, you are out of line on this one. With Don Imus you hit the nail right on the head, you were dead on balls accurate and look where it got you. Nowhere. Imus is still on the airwaves, he had a six month vacation on his ranch and now he is back and maybe a little wiser for his lesson. But Kelly Tilghman is not Don Imus; and to say that, "Lynching is not murder in general. It is not assault in general. It is a specific racial term that this woman should be held accountable for," the reverend said. "What she said is racist. Whether she's a racist -- whether she runs around at night making racist statements -- is immaterial." (as reported on the CNN.com article Tiger OK with 'lynch' remark, but Sharpton ready for battle)

But you are wrong. Originally the word Lynching referred to a Virginia justice of the peace who meted out harsher justice than was legal justifiable to... now wait for this... TORY SUPPORTERS! This is incredibly ironic to me that the first victims of lynching were probably white anglicans in the colonies.

Now I will not deny that when somebody says the word lynching I am immediately drawn to the image of burning crosses under magnolia trees and morons standing around in white robes. But that is the power of media and language. For a word to have its definition changed over time.

Is the concept of lynching specifically racist? No. You can ask the friends and relatives of Matthew Shepard, or James Maestas, both gay men who were lynched (one was white the other latino). I think and feel that lynching as an act occurs by definition when someone is killed by a mob for an offense without a trial. In the case of Shepard and Maestas being openly gay, in the context of Tilghman's comments being better at the game of golf than literally everybody who has ever played the game. But it isn't specifically racist, it is sometimes (or I will concede often) racist in the context of the 1960's and the south. But it changes where ever you go. I grew up in a region where cattle thieves were lynched.

What Sharpton is trying to do with this is to raise awareness (I imagine) and make people more aware of the words they are using and what they mean or how they are interpreted affects the message of what they are saying. I wonder if Tilghman had said, "If young players want to beat Tiger Woods in a PGA tour event a good place to start would be to take him out and beat the hell out him." If we would be having this big discussion. I don't think we would. I think it would have blown over, the twenty-five people that watch the Golf Channel would have nodded along at the dominance of the games greatest player; or maybe they would have been aghast at the open defiance towards the spirit of competition. But the key point is that we wouldn't be having a dialog.

Sharpton very specifically objects to the use of the word lynch. Which is just fucking stupid and it marginalizes the real issue of the "deep-seated" (should that be deep-seeded?) and "well cloaked" racism that IS very apparent in this country.

But seriously if we are going to be nit picky can we please get rid of the use of the "N-word" and yes I feel stupid typing that by everybody: white people, young people, dumb people, rappers, racists. Let's start there. The N-word should be banned forever from the parlance. And I wonder if all the people that marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. and that support the Rainbow Coalition and the National Action Network threw their full weight behind that if it would make a difference?

Because if Don Imus got rehired by a radio station for saying the girls basketball team at Rutgers were "nappy-headed hos" and nobody talks about it anymore; I am pretty sure that Kelly Tilghman, as bad as she feels right now, is going to fade back into the pleasant obscurity of televised golf.

"Why don't you fly around my pretty little miss?" -Built to Spill

2008-01-10T17:15:00.000-05:00

This post is going to be be something else. I haven't posted pictures on here before, or rather I haven't posted my own pictures on here. But today I will; strangely I am getting my stage fright symptoms.

Today I took a flying lesson. It was through an outfit called Horizon Aviation and it was totally amazing. There is almost no way I can put this into words. So of course I will try.

First I guess I should highlight the whole day, as some of you will know I am sans automobile which means that I take the bus; the bus went right to the hanger from which I flew (what an amazing sentence to type). There was a pretty funny cast of characters on the bus, which is, I think, pretty standard for buses that go into Cranston or Warwick. Anyway at the back of the bus was an Asian couple; I am going to guess that they were Korean because RISD seems to have a pretty large Korean population, but I don't know and it doesn't really matter. One of them was flying out of the main airport (as evidenced by the suitcase that was in tow). The guy in the couple was being pretty overt about feeling up his girlfriend and the girl was damn near shamed into looking out the window the whole time. Now I am not normally a sick-o pervert that stares at this--okay I am but in this case I would have had to move or crane my body uncomfortably to not watch; and I got on the bus first so fuck 'em, free show for me. I felt bad for the girl she was pretty uncomfortable about the whole thing and I tried to keep my eyes glued to the stupid bus ads for the domestic violence group here in town; however, it is hard and so I tried to watch traffic through the opposite window or play a game on my phone.

I got off the bus and walked over to the terminal. I have this thing about public transport, I call it the one-stop-rule. Basically it means that if somebody gets off the bus one stop before me I will get off with them and just walk the extra 500, or so, feet to where I would have gotten off. Warwick, near the airport, is weird. I don't know how to describe it but if I die and end up in hell it might look a lot like Warwick, with the worst parts near the airport.

When I got to the Horizon Office (45 minutes early, yes I am insane) I said hello and sat down and started talking to the folks there. Really great group of people, funny, well-mannered by my standards which doesn't say a hell of a lot), they were all Patriots fans, and they weren't afraid to tell a dirty joke or two: so naturally I fell in love with them all, and wanted to start working with them as soon as I could, because I knew I would be hooked.

This is, you see, not my first experience in small planes. I have been in crop dusters when I was growing up, at least twice that I can remember, I have also flown in a small plane called a scitaborea up in Nome, Alaska when I was visiting a family friend. We landed that in the middle of a snow field so that we could look at some caribou up close (and I mean really up close). Point being I knew what I was in for; but what really amazed them out of their knickers was that my grandfather was a Hump Pilot during WWII.

It was pretty amazing, growing up, to hear stories from my grandfather about his flying back and forth from Kunming or Chengdu. He was also part of the Berlin Airlift and has some really amazing stories about that as well.

Anyway, I am digressing here a little bit. The point was that the guys at Horizon were impressed and I like impressing people, so yea that.

I flew in a Cessna 172, tail number N470U (or 470 Uniform). Something interesting about me is that I know the phonetic alphabet used by the Civil Air Patrol.

This particular plane was not uncomfortable, thankfully. It was however mighty snug and I sat with my arms folded so that I wouldn't interfere with the piloting of the aircraft.

We took off from runway 23 on ramp Victor (hehehe) and headed south to the Newport practice field. Let me tell you, taking off on the same runway that a Boeing 737 has landed on just before is pretty damn exhilarating. One thing that surprised me is that the plane doesn't go as fast as I thought it might need to at take-off. There is also this feeling of weightlessness as the plane bumps through the air on the initial ascent. It was pretty great.

This is me flying a plane. I know it might seem frightening, me flying a plane when I don't even drive a car, and trust me flying and trying to look that damn good was really hard work.

I don't quite know how to describe this. So I will use my baser language skills. IT FUCKING ROCKS! Flying a plane might be the most fun I have had in my clothes. It feels like and act of open defiance, the weight of gravity when you turn to the right or the left, keeping the plane level on the horizon, keeping the nose up or down, it is really something else and I had no idea how much fun it could have been.

Here is some random stuff that came to me when I was flying and looking down at people's lives. I think you can tell a lot about a person by the state of their backyard. From the air, there were despicable and incredible views. I saw a pool covered in a weird brownish green slime and a backyard that was littered with bikes and broken lawn furniture. I saw some that had vegetable gardens, flower gardens and manicured lawns. It was really interesting.

We also need to recognize that we build far too many roads. (i.e. We are destroying our surroundings.) The picture to the left is a picture of the town crossing of Little Compton, RI. What you can sort of make out is the natural landscape and how the town is plopped down and then the roads spider-web out, it was a sad realization when I was up there, because you miss the scope of it from the ground. Little Compton is a beautiful town from the road, readily thought to be one of the prettiest in Rhode Island.

Last thing I am going to show is the view of a former Rhode Island landmark; this is Rocky Point Park. I am not a Rhode Island native and I believe that this park has been closed since I have been coming here (late 90's). But I understand the stigma behind the idea of the small town amusement park. There were two near me growing up; as a kid there was a park in El Paso, TX called Western Playland. It is pretty standard fare for an amusement park, at least it was, back in the day. It had a roller coaster, a big midway section and some other rides: a whoa belly ride called Drop Zone, a couple of the whip around gravity rides. It was great. In Albuquerque there was a place called Cliff's. Same thing, nothing really special, just an amusement park, good for a lark during finals week or spring break.

The sad thing about Rocky Point is that they tore it down and I can't seem to figure out what happened. When you talk to Rhode Islanders they all have great stories about what Rocky Point meant to them but sure as shit the thing is gone. The picture is black and white so you don't get a real sense of how unfortunate the imagery is, but it is really stark. Some of the dark rings in the photo are just holes in the ground. The place is covered in graffiti that is visible from 1500 feet and it just sort of makes you sad inside to see something like that in that state of disrepair. I sort of wish, for all the Rhode Islanders, that someone would just level the property and get it ready for whatever is next.

I think that the down-fall of Rocky Point is a direct result of a bigger better amusement park in Massachusetts, called Six Flags over New England, being so darn close. You get so much more bang for the buck that it makes it hard for the mom and pop places to compete. Which I suppose is true for most businesses. I guess it hits me the same way as it hits me when I see a run down "Main Street" scenario. Like we are losing Americana for a strip mall vision of America, we shouldn't let that happen. We should support locally owned businesses. (And yes that even includes the Dunkin Donuts or McDonald's franchise, local people are taking a chance, reward them for it.)

The final descent back into TF Green was nice, for a controlled crash (something my grandfather used to call landings). We taxied back to the hanger via ramp Bravo and that was the end of the day.

Now the bad news: I am hooked on an activity that I can't possibly afford. Each lesson is somewhere between 250 and 400 dollars and so I doubt I will be able to afford it on a non-profit salary.

The good news is that it gives me something to strive for.

"Who do you need? Nobody! Well you're lucky nobody's around." -Bishop Allen

2008-01-09T21:30:00.000-05:00

I have a gigantic bone to pick with The Media. Specifically the .com media sources. The bone is best summed up like this. You Suck!

Now I will explain a little bit more.

No, wait. I am going to qualify my emotion behind this first. I think that politics in America sucks; and I am going to blame every news media source.

See I think that somewhere politicians are a lot like me, angry young men and women who get sick of walking past hungry, homeless, impoverished people and decide that the time to stand up and do something about it is now. So they take action and start a campaign to change something locally and it escalates and then they run for something else and so and so and so on.

What the shit the media groups do to fuck it all up for us is they target the people that will sell papers and hype the shit of stories involving those two people. I think that if the American Public where made more aware of the platforms of Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson and John Edwards there might be a real opportunity to effect some change in a country that desperately needs it. Shit, I am so sick of this I will extend the same courtesy to Ron Paul.

But The Media (and it fucking kills me to use capital letters on that) has decided the Democratic nomination should be between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I don't need to point out that they are both minority candidates and it would be an amazing story to have either the first woman or the first black president sometime before I turn forty, but still. They are both establishment candidates and I would love to be a fly on the walls of either Kucinich or Paul's war rooms when CNN.com announces that Americans are making change a priority in the election.

I wonder if poor Kucinich is banging his head against the wall saying, "Am I taking crazy pills here?"

Part of the reason that it makes me so damn angry is that I happen to have met Bill Richardson and I think that the US would be a much better place with him in charge of things at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But we will never know. He is an environmentalist, a minority (he is of Mexican decent) a wonderful diplomat, (I have heard rumors that Colin Powell used to call him daily for advice when dealing with foreign diplomacy issues).

But the thing about it is that I am convinced that if any candidate got elected The Media (and again, I hate myself right now) would find a way to turn on them, regardless of the esteem of the public. And I feel this largely because the News Media is a business. They make money by selling papers and clicks on websites. That is why all of the edgy talking heads (I am specifically talking about the dipshits like O'Reilly, Chris "Mine goes to 11" Matthews, Bow-tie dick-head from Point Counterpoint, pretty much anybody from Fox or MSNBC... It doesn't matter they are all the same) are loud and theatrical. Because we stop the channel flicking and listen to what they have to say.

But look it is really sad to me when the best news source in the US is a comedy show on a basic cable COMEDY NETWORK!

I know I am all over the place on this but you have to understand the cartwheel of rage in my mind.

The Primary elections are the place where we, as Americans, are supposed to be able to find the candidates that appeal to us, speak to us in a metaphysical sense and evoke in us the spirit of America that we most identify with. And I would be shocked out of my knickers if 100 people polled on the street could name everybody that was involved in the Democratic Primary this year.

I wonder if, in a purely unscientific survey, we searched MSNBC, CNN and Fox New websites for articles on each of the people in the primary elections what percentage of news is directed at the top two candidates and what guys like Kucinich and Ron Paul get? I would wager my wrist watch that the bottom four don't even come within half of the top two. (And I love my wristwatch.)

I still can't help but think that we are doomed in this election. And between media interests, special interests, and a shaky international diplomatic reputation I don't know what we can do.

Ugh!

"The sun shining bright, everythings seems alright when we're poisoning pigeons in the park." - Tom Lehrer

2008-01-07T10:23:00.001-05:00

Chalk up this scene into the things I can't unsee column. I was walking to go and grab breakfast with Lovely Wife Sunday when we saw a small group of sparrows feasting on a pink mass of vomit. I wish I was kidding but alas I have a witness to it. It was pretty damn gross.

All of the grossness aside I have the wonderful prospect of a couple of days off coming up and I am really beside myself with joy right now. During the holidays I worked from mid-November to New Year's Eve with only two days off, which is pretty brutal, I am still a little groggy. My goal for the vacation is to make a little headway into a writing project that I have been doing some research on for a while. I am also hoping to finally cash in a gift certificate from my 30th birthday (yes it is eighteen months old). And I am, fingers-crossed, going to start taking fencing lessons. I am sort of hoping that the first lesson covers the classic line, "My name is Eniego Montoya..."

Outside of writing and finishing Atonement, the novel by Ian McEwan, I have no other goals which is pretty damned amazing.

I have been thinking of something lately that is a little more obtuse and harder to articulate. I have this nasty habit of not being afraid of talking to people. It doesn't matter the context either; people standing on a street, sitting on the bus, at a restaurant, etc., I will talk to anybody. Sometimes it gets me into trouble and I regret it in the long run. I can think of a couple of situations where I have invited some insanity into my life by striking up an unprovoked conversation. But most of the time it turns out to my advantage and the end result is that, as I walk around town, I am constantly running into people that I know. The downside I suppose, is that I feel like an ego-maniac when I can't take twenty steps without seeing someone I know.

Now I wouldn't say that these people are my friends but I am not going to not acknowledge that I I know them. So I will typically wave and smile. Now for the obtuse part; why is it so nice to have someone smile at you? What is it about an act of genuine good-will that is so heartwarming. I am sort of wondering if we all smiled at people on the street more if this wouldn't be a better place in grand terms.

I am sitting at Starbucks as I type this up and a woman that I have never spoken to, but see here often came in and smiled. It feels nice: reminds me that we live in, or share, the same space with people.

If you read this during the day, and it isn't too late. Smile at somebody on the street, or wave or whatever feels natural to you and let me know what the response you get is.

Well off to tackle some writing. I will certainly send an update when I take my flying lesson.

"I read the signs, I got all my stars aligned..." -St. Vincent

2008-01-04T11:28:00.000-05:00

A guilty pleasure of mine is astrology. It sounds really hokey and I would file my feelings for it under the heading: interesting but not particularly germane. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about Mercury in retrograde or Mars's transit through Virgo, because I don't know what it means; but I like to read my horoscope and I have spent a small (albeit very small) amount of time learning more about star charts and what it all means in the long run.

For example, I am a Leo. But I am also a Leo/Cancer Cusp. It is strange because most people would say, "Oh, he's a leo so he is the attention hog, self-centered, guy that likes to be in the lime-light and wants everybody to see him." And honestly, that couldn't be further from the truth. But I will save my diatribe about "What it all means to V. in astrology" for another more crystal laden, granola-y post.

What I want to mention today is that my local newspaper had a big special for New Year's Day where they posted up the Holiday Mathis (that is the astrologer that syndicates the horoscope) thoughts for the New Year. Since I am a Cancer/Leo cusp I read both (that is the Leo in me). Here they are:

Cancer:
Take your instinct about what is truly valuable with you into the New Year. And what you can leave back in 2007 is your fear that you are unworthy of it. Repeat: "I am worthy of the things I desire."

Leo:
Take your need for attention into the future. It perfectly matches other people's to be amused. But if there's ones thing you can leave back in 2007, it's low confidence. You're a star! Believe it.

When I read that it really floored me. Never has the horoscope been more apropos of the things I was thinking about at the time. Usually I read them a day late and sit there and say, "Nope, you were wrong, my day sucked. I don't know what you are talking about financial windfalls and romance; more like flaming bags with poop in them."

But this has been on my mind a lot because I know that somewhere along the way in my life, I heard Leos are arrogant, and I picked up that self-deprecation is cute. And maybe those things are true: but maybe only in small doses. I trip over an ottoman, stand up and announce that the next show is completely different: cute. I constantly say that people don't like me because I am overweight: tiresome and boring.

Also, to me the two of these horoscopes are inextricably tied to each other. Part of the reason I have such a hard time with the thoughts of achieving success as a writer or in my career or whatever because when it all comes down to it I can't believe that good things happen to me; because sometimes I don't want them to.

This is turning into a really weird post so I am going to announce, to the world, my New Year's Resolutions for 2007.

1. I am NOT going to run the New York Marathon. (This is strictly so that next year I can say I kept at least one resolution.)
2. I am NOT going to be so damn hard on myself. I know somewhere in the pit of stomach that I am a fun person, I hear it all the time, it is time to start believing it.
3. I am going to make a conscientious effort to cut meat (and I mean chicken, pork, beef, game and fowl) out of my diet.
4. I am going to believe that I have the ability to be a writer as a career, I just have to believe in it and chase it.

"C is for Cookie" -Cookie Monster

2007-12-28T13:43:00.001-05:00

I am sitting on my ass before work and so far my nourishment for the day has been a steady consumption of oatmeal cookies. I am a sick diseased individual.

"We'll take a world, and set it on its ear." -Hey A Movie! (The Muppets)

2007-12-08T09:36:00.000-05:00

Well the past week has been a bit of a movie blitz, some highs, some lows and a long overdue post.

First off. If you haven't seen Enchanted run, don't walk, to your nearest theater. This is the most full-price worthy movie I have seen in a long time. It is charming, witty, endearing, lovely and magical. It is a Disney Movie, so it is hokey. But know that going in and you will be okay. The first ten minutes is your standard Disney animated fare but it turns abruptly when the wicked step-mother sends the heroine into a world with no happiness: namely New York City.

The hero, or one of them at least is a divorce lawyer (who is himself a divorcee). I don't want to give too much of the movie away here because part of what really made it wonderful for me was walking in and expecting a piece of shit and walking out believing again in the power of True Love's Kiss.

Some of the standout roles were played by James Marsden as the goofy cartoon prince coming to rescue his soon to be princess. Amy Adams plays Giselle to perfection as a bewildered, yet somehow awe inspiring, young girl looking for true love. Susan Sarandon is under utilized as the wicked stepmother but every scene she is in is spectacular.

The last great performance was Patrick Dempsey who has come a long from Can't Buy Me Love and Loverboy. He has one scene that sums up his role in the story perfectly. There is a big number in Central Park and quite literally the entire park is singing and dancing and he is walking through the middle of it unaffected; but then at the end he is bopping his head, just a little bit and then he stops. It was perfect.

One thing that disturbed me about the movie, however, was Disney's inability to seem to distinguish between and innocent gesture and a profoundly intimate gesture. There is one spot where Robert and Giselle have a moment that to a twelve year old would seem inconsequential. But to someone who is in his thirties it has had my head spinning.

I don't mind spoiling this one a little bit but I will warn you know if you don't want to know too much about the movie then skip down to the next section.

Last chance.

Okay so at one point in the movie it is morning and Giselle has made breakfast and Robert is standing there in a robe. He has either just gotten out of the shower, or has just woken up. He doesn't have a shirt on under the robe and his chest hair is sticking out of the robe. It seems silly typing it out but some conversation happens and Giselle ends up stroking the chest hair and you can see the look in Dempsey's eyes. I don't know if this was a planned scene or if it was just the product of two actors playing with the scene but it was brilliantly done. But the aftermath is a little alarming. You effectively have a child in a woman's body, who still believes that True Love's Kiss is the most powerful magic world. There is a destruction of the innocence that is really bothering me, still even a week later.

You should definitely see Enchanted. Even if you have to go under a veil of subterfuge and skullduggery. I went to a Saturday matinee and the look of the ticket guy when I bought one ticket for the show was worth the price of admission alone. It is the holiday's and you need to be lifted up and reminded about the wonder of love and passion or just step out of yourself for an afternoon then go and see the movie, it is beyond wonderful.

No Country For Old Men
Great movie, well shot, but a Cormac McCarthy story at its base which means it can be largely inaccessible and gritty and obtuse. I would recommend it for a matinee but not full price unless you were a big fan of either Coen Brothers' movies or Cormac McCarthy.

As usual the Coen Brothers' get the most out of their actors and it is always aweseome to see Tommy Lee Jones in a movie. Javier Bardem, as Anton Chigurh, was creepy and wonderful and it makes me want to go back and see more of his work. Kelly MacDonald, who is my favorite "that girl" actress, had a small part that capped the movie off very well. It was a Coen Brothers' Film. I don't know what else to say about it.

Golden Compass

Ugh! This is a tough one. Because like The Seeker: The Dark is Rising it is hard for me to separate the book from the movie. Nicky had said at the end of the movie, "If you don't think the audience is smart enough to understand the plot, then why make the movie?" And that sort of sums up my opinion as the movie based on the book.

They made some really baffling choices, rearranging the order of the story so that things happen out of order and inexplicably vis a vis the rest of the story. They took out a character and added an unnecessary scene, and they had to rush some exposition that took away the slow build up to the climax of the first book (Which stopped short in the movie).

If I popped the book and the movie into the intercision chamber and separate them from each other I can bee a little more objective.

I thought that all things being equal it was a well-paced, entertaining movie. The special effects used to provide humanity to the daemons and the Panserbjorne are wonderfully done and the artistic director did a great job of providing a life and a vision for Pullman's world that was awe inspiring and different and exciting: familiar but different. Nicole Kidman plays the role of Coulter exactly the way I had seen it played in my head when I read the book. Ian McKellan and Ian McShane as the voice of the Ice Bears Iorek and Iofur, respectively, provide a gruff personality that really sums up what I imagined a Panserbjorne to be. Sam Elliot is always wonderful and he gets to play himself more or less.

The acting of the children is spotty, the boys who play Billy Costa and Roger are middling at best. But Dakota Blue Richards who plays Lyra will probably get a lot of work in the future. She was very good and seemed to a portray a depth in the character that I hadn't noticed when I read the story.

Like I said, this is a tough one for me. Great book, okay movie. If the movie were seen first I might be able to be a bit more forgiving about it. This is a matinee or bargain Tuesday movie.

"Nobody understands the wreck of the soul the way you do." -The New Pornographers

2007-11-23T08:14:00.000-05:00

Rob from Six Sentences has been kind enough to accept another submission from me, and I understand there will be one more coming up in December. WOOT!

I am, as ever, a big fan of the work at Six Sentences. The things I like about it are that there is a healthy mix of professionals and amateurs. Avant garde and pedestrian alike can find something there. I remember my first post which was a little over a year ago at this point. It was about a guy who has a shitty day at work and then finds out that his significant other has left him. It was funny, but rough.

I feel as though my writing ability has changed over the last year; mostly because I am doing more of it. I am taking classes through Writers Digest Online Workshops and it is helping and I am becoming a much more confident writer. I have not trouble starting these days but I am still at a loss for when to transition and how to complete the story that I want to tell. Sometimes I find myself stuck where the character is sitting someplace and I can't get them out of that place. I started a story a year ago about a guy whose father kills himself and the character was taking a cross country train trip. But I couldn't figure out how to get him off of the train in the place he was going, because I couldn't figure out what was going to happen to him once he got there. It was really sort of sad and this poor bastard has been sitting on the train ever since. Now I go back and I read it and I don't like it or anything about it. So I have closed that and might at some point go back to it. We will see.

In the meantime, I chug away here and at my seldom updated--but often thought about--story about Marlowe. Occasionally I submit something to Rob, who posts them up on his fantastic site.

Today I am going to see Beowulf in 3D. Expect a post about it tonight or tomorrow sometime.

I hope everybody has a truly wonderful Holiday Season, which ever holiday it is you practice.

"When not being stupid, is not enough" - Built to Spill

2007-11-22T09:18:00.000-05:00

Saddest Day of My Career

For those of you who don't know me I think it is fair to establish one very important point about me. I am a nut for English Football. Most of the time if you hear me talk about football games I am talking about something that is happening five time zones away.

I don't know that I necessarily root for any team in particular, of course I want to see the United States do well; but I also root for Australia, and I root for England and Scotland and Wales... I am a footballing whore. (The advantages of my heritage I suppose.)

Wednesday night England was playing a game to determine their qualification for Euro 2008, which is arguably the second or third largest sports event in the world, and they lost. In a game where all they needed to do was to draw the game to go to the next round, they got creative, gambled and came up short. And the result is that the manager lost his job.

Normally I have sympathy when managers get sacked: not this time. Steve McClaren earned his sacking, by continuing a disastrous policy of team selection that his predecessor embarked upon and everybody that watches football knew. That the teams he was selecting was inadequate to win a clutch game.

I can't stress this enough. For McClaren to deviate in the most important position (goalkeeper) and give the start to someone who was largely untested at the international level is irresponsible. The fact that David Beckham had a resurgence at the international level and was replaced for another player lacking in big game experience is a grotesque lapse but not unforgivable. Wright-Phillips offered speed down the right side, which is something that McClaren must of have thought was necessary.

But the biggest gaffe on his part was the selection of both Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard in the midfield role.

Gerrard and Lampard play the same role for their clubs, both are offensively minded, both dictate the flow of the game to the forwards and both are equally talented. Both of them have no business being on the field at the same time.

Arguably England's best displays in qualifying came while Lampard was injured. Gareth Barry was paired with Steven Gerrard and their partnership was reminiscent of some of the greatest pairings recently. The games they played together had hints of Keane and Scholes, Viera and Ljungberg, Makelele and Zidane.

I have to say that I am borderline relieved that England didn't qualify because it will give the FA two full years to think about what they are trying to accomplish with their national team. And I am hoping that the new manager will learn from his predecessors mistakes.

And now on to something else entirely...

"Oh look at the view, look at the people running, they've so much to do..." - Emma Pollock

2007-11-19T13:19:00.000-05:00

I guess Christmas time is upon us. Black Friday is a mere day away, and I can't help feeling a little jaded about the spirit/meaning of Christmas.

For me Christmas started mid November, which is too damn early . I don't think that Christmas should be allowed to be pumped up until at least December first. But what the hell do I know, right?

I am sitting and watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and I had a couple of quick hit thoughts here:

NBC sucks. The commentary on the parade is trite, meaningless, and gratuitous; which is probably to be expected I guess, but still, I can't help but not give a shit about this thing.
I am woefully out of touch with what is going in the world musically. Who in the hell is Kate Hanley? Why is she singing on a float with the Care Bears? And can't NBC, or the parade organizers, do something about the piss poor lip syncing. Seriously folks.
Menudo. Shouldn't they be forty-five. I remember being eight or nine and seeing Ricky Martin in Menudo. I think I understand the idea of Menudo. But I still get confused.
"High School Musical" is a disease.
The high school marching bands are awesome. I saw my high school on the parade a couple of years ago and I don't think I ever felt more pride as an alumnus.
Thank you to Wynonna Judd for not pretending. She came out with no "microphone". I think she probably just said to the guy, "Eff you. I am not talking out this foam covered Lummi Stick. I'm Wynonna Judd."
There was a silver rabbit balloon that went by a little bit ago. It is part of a program (although I use the term loosely) where famous artists are designing balloons.
With the writer's strike going on right now, I wonder who wrote this drivel. I imagine Jimmy the intern being given a pen and a mylar bag of coffee last night as the producers were standing over his shoulders cracking their knuckles.
Thank goodness the parade is almost over. Santa is about to come down the road and he looks great. This year's Santa is a jolly looking dude. It is the best part of the whole show.

I hope everybody had or has a great Thanksgiving. Thanks for reading, thanks for leaving your comments.

"time f'r turning over and over" -Sonic Youth

2007-11-15T09:23:00.000-05:00

You know sometimes I sit and look at the time between posts and I honestly can't remember where the hell my life is going. It is a surreal feeling when time passes as quickly as it has lately.

So I guess I will just give a quick update on the things that are going on in my life and one of the recent joys of downtown living that I got exposed to.

First, music, music, music. I have been on a freaking tear lately. I am not a person who typically makes playlists; but for some reason I have been doing that a lot lately. It is a fun way to rediscover your old music. I didn't realize, for instance, that I had as much Magnetic Fields as I do. Probably the result of my friend Dr. Josh, who is musical pimp most of the time.

Book Books Books, I am reading a book that spawned at least two movies (and I heard a third is in the works). But it reminds how much more fun reading is then watching movies or TV. The book, which is called Night Watch, by Sergei Lukyanenko is pretty fascinating. My favorite part is underlying theme of duality and also about the fine line between good and evil. The story of the book is principally about two equally powerful forces of Others, a group described as magically empowered people, but not human. The forces of Light and Dark (similar to Susan Cooper for those of you regular readers) have maintained a balance of power designed to not destroy the world. But the downside is that it creates this moral vacuum where neither good or evil is quite what it seems. I am a little over half-way through and can't recommend it enough.

The last thing I suppose I have to mention is that I just signed up for a Facebook account. I feel like I sold a little piece of myself to do it, but in the long run it is probably not the end of the world. The benefits of it are that I just found two people that lived up the street from me when I was a kid. So reconnecting with old friends is wonderful... Yea that.

There is a lot more to come, down the pipe. Christmas Carol starts at work soon and that always provides for funny anecdotes.

Last thing. Living down town is freaking awesome (and I don't use the term freaking lightly). Providence is having a homelessness awareness week. Homelessness is horrible and we are too rich as a country to allow it to happen. It makes me hate people that have three and four homes and complain about mortgages. Anyway, I don't know if this was a crazy perf art thing, or if this was a legitimately wacky lady, but I was waiting for Dr. Josh and Dr. Bad to come and pick me and Lovely Wife up for a double date (Dr. Bad is a girl and she is truly bad-ass). As we were standing on the street a woman went by in a house dress. On rollerskates. No Shit. She was yelling about her homelessness how the shelter up the road wouldn't take her in, and how despite all of that, she was still getting around, "ON SKATES NO LESS" (her words, not mine). The best part though was that one point she started singing "War" by Edwin Starr. You know the one:

"War, huh, what is it good for? Absolutely Nothing."

Yeah that one. It was awesome. I love living downtown.

"Let my love open the door to your heart" -Pete Townshend

2007-11-09T22:39:00.000-05:00

I think that if I was ever going to make a list of the 100 favorite songs of all time, that Pete Townsend ode to love would be on the list, and it would be one of about fifteen or twenty that are guaranteed spaces. Tonight I saw Dan In Real Life a movie featuring Steve Carrell, Juliette Binoche and cast of others.

I think the scene that sums up the movie is one where Carrell is playing the guitar with his brother serenading a girl to a song he doesn't really know that well. It is this incredibly endearing scene and it features Let My Love Open The Door and it just makes sense.

There are a couple of other things that this movie does well.

First, it seems to capture big family life well. I don't come from a big family but it is big enough that I know what it feels like when everybody starts to really get close, and not emotionally, but physically. The movie takes place in a house that is pretty obviously filled to the brim with people and then all the hilarity ensues. But that isn't the real treat.

The real treat is watching Steve Carrell. Finally there is someone to take the mantle of humanitarian comedian from Steve Martin. Steve Martin was at his absolute comedic best when the moments were steeped in sadness and Carrell has the same ability to sink himself so far into the hearts of the audience that when the tragedy strikes you can see the pain and the hope that he has and you can't help but laugh along.

The film is expertly directed and I think my favorite part were the scenes that were shot around Providence. There was a coffee shop that was converted into a place called Yumm's for the movie and seeing it in the film was really sweet, because you know I have been there.

I am a total sucker for the romantic comedy and this one is a great. The tension between Juliette Binoche and Carrell and later Dane Cook--who does a much better job than I would have given him credit for--is incredibly real. They have this ability throughout the movie to shoot these wicked furtive glances back and forth it is really about as amazing a movie as you could hope for.

Here is the best part: the soundtrack, by Sondre Lerche, is about as good as they come.

If you have nothing better to do in the three days find a theater playing this movie and go see it. You won't be disappointed.

"Look at them Yo-Yos, that's the way you do it..." - Dire Straits

2007-11-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

I came across this article today PFA chief backs players' salaries. The article is the PFA (Professional Footballer's Association) Union chief responding to criticism from the new English Minister of Sport.

So the first thing that comes to mind is that we, in the United States, need a Secretary of Sport, a no-joke cabinet position that is dedicated to overseeing the integrity of sports in the US.

The second thing that came up is that the Minister, a man named Gerry Sutcliffe, is spot on, but his scope is off.

The problem isn't limited to the UK; we have it in the US as well. Look at the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees and Mets, nearly every NBA team and just about every team in the NFL (although NFL salaries don't seem too astronomical vis a vis the Jeters, Ramirezes and A-rods in the world).

The PFA chief says in the article, "There's so much money coming into the game, surely it's only fair that they get their share of that?" And he has a point, to a point.

The problem of sports entertainment is a systemic problem that stems from, and this is going to blow your mind, our laziness.

Think about the number of sports events you attend versus the number of sports events you watch. Is the ratio 1:10?, 1:20?, 1:100? I know that I am usually good for attending about five live sports events a year, I wish it was more, but it isn't and I deal with it. Whereas, I think I must watch close to 125 or so on TV (that includes Sunday football, March Madness, English Premiership when I can, and NBA and MLB finals.)

The people that run television stations recognize that sports is one of the top five draws of viewers (I made that stat up but it has to be in the top five) to their networks. Plus they attract covetted demographics: Males 18 to 34. All of that means that advertising space during and NFL game is prime real estate. Which is why the networks can afford to pay the licensing fees to the NFL, NBA, MLB, etc,.

The TV companies are making astronomical amounts of money on the selling of advertising space. The owners are making money on the licensing agreements. But here is the rub. Once the players get involved it raises the overhead of the business. Which means the owners have to make more money somewhere else.

Typically most service businesses plan on net payroll to be a little over 60% of their revenues. Sometimes it is more sometimes it is less, but on average that is about the right range. When you start dealing with numbers in the hundreds of millions of dollars the difference between 53% and 54% is pretty large, could be four or five million dollars.

When the owners of teams sit down and plan out there organizations budgets for a year, they have little formulas that they plug numbers and it spits out other numbers. The TV companies and the overarching sport are so in bed with each other that they can't separate at this point. Not even a little bit. Look at what happened to NBC when they stopped carrying the NFL, their sports branding took a real hit and they lost a lot of their talent to other networks. By comparison if the NFL started asking silly figures and all of the networks stopped paying them then the sport would fail, payrolls couldn't be met, profits would collapse and nobody would want to get in the business.

I don't think that the sports industry makes a ton of profit but I think that profit margins of 5% to 15% probably generate millions to the partnerships that run the business, notice you don't see a lot of public sports teams in the United States. So when you raise payroll by 10% you have to come up with that money somewhere else.

Enter my conspiracy theory: I think that TV and the Sports Organizations are in cahoots to make unfriendly stadiums. Here is why:

Guys that run TV production are amazing at what they do, look at shitty sitcoms, they have these ridiculous laugh tracks that are supposed to cue you in on when to laugh. They can stimulate a response from you. Why can't they simulate noise?

Stadiums are very rarely sold out, the exception might be the NFL although there was a Monday night game in Jacksonville where whole sections were tarped off and not being used, New Orleans and Atlanta have trouble filling their stadiums consistently; only teams with entrenched fan bases or teams that are competing for a championship seem to sell out their stadiums all the time. But the fan base isn't suffering.

Look to the sales of HDTV sets. I have had ten or twenty conversations recently that went like this:

X: I don't go to see live sports.
Me: Why not?
X: I have High Def. My house is warm; and soda, beer and popcorn runs me eight dollars for all, not each.
Me: Good point. But what about the experience of being in the stadium.
X: Surround Sound

I think, and this is the gut reaction here. That every viewer that stays captive on their couch increases the revenue stream for the TV companies. Which increases revenues for the League.

Now this whole thing started out with an article about players wages... wo here is how I bring it around. Do you know who I think is paying the players wages? The fans through gate entries. I think the ticket prices (which the last time I looked for Gilette Stadium were so expensive that I close my web browser) are financing the million dollar salaries of the players. I have heard the argument that players have short career spans than say a real estate agent or a teacher, and I think that is a fair statement so here is my solution.

Let's say that the average upper middle class American makes $55,000 a year on average over 40 years. That means that they make $2,200,000 in their lifetime.

My proposal is to cap a players salary at $3,000,000 a career. That means that they still make a horrific sum of money. But it isn't an egregious amount of money. I mean, Jesus Christ, Manny Ramirez makes what $19,000,000 A YEAR? You can't tell that his entertainment value is worth 9 middle class lifetimes PER YEAR!

If we could get the Players unions, global, to accept a series of contracts that would limit their players to a lifetime earnings of X amount (where X is some reasonable lifetime mean) then we could lower gate prices back to levels where a teacher with two sons could afford to take his sons and their friends to watch a baseball game. And isn't that what sports event should be about?

"Our aspirations are wrapped up in books..." -Belle & Sebastian

2007-10-28T13:52:00.000-04:00

So here it comes, with out further ado: My long promised essay/review about Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising.

In order for me to write about this book intelligently I have to tell where I was in read it the first time.

I was in sixth grade, which was my 11th year (critical for reasons to be talked about later). My parents were divorced and I had just spent a year living in Kentucky with my grandfather. I moved back to my hometown in New Mexico and felt like an outsider. A girl that I knew named Sarah Howell (I think that was her name, she moved on to Nebraska and I don't think I ever saw her again) recommended that I read The Dark Is Rising while I was at a book fair at school.

I did not tear through it. I bought the first one started reading it, put it down, started reading it again, put it down, then towards the end of sixth grad I hit a period where I felt so alone that my only solace was this book.

The book is about eleven year old Will Stanton who discovers on his eleventh birthday that he is the last of the Old Ones, servants of the Light who wage constant battle against the Dark. The story is many things, but first and foremost it is a great representation of what it feels like to be on the verge of young adulthood. I think that I started puberty when I was nine or ten and by the time I was eleven I had grown three inches, lost all my baby teeth and started wanting to be in love for the first time. I related very well to Will Stanton's constant battle of self definition.

One of the great recurring themes in the book is Will's coming to terms with the fact that he is immortal so while he feels like an eleven year old boy he is in fact ageless. There are confrontations throughout the book where Will has to come to terms with his agelessness. And there are times when he draws on this limitless knowledge that he has. He knows things about his home in Buckinghamshire because he has lived through them in previous times.

Along those lines, the thing that Susan Cooper's book did for me is to shape my desire for knowledge about history. I can remember reading a chapter where Will acquires one of the Six Signs on a road called Tramps' Alley. During confrontation with a witch named Maggie, The Walker and Will we learn that the road is actually a road of great power, one of the Old Ways and was actually known as Oldway Lane. This is a device that some English authors employ very well and it always intrigues me.

England is a country that has always seemed ageless to me, one of the side effects of this book, and I love it when writers try to evoke that agelessness in their stories. Recently a Neil Gaiman story called Neverwhere did it for me. This was the first though.

There are other things that I love about the whole series of "Dark is Rising" books. Principally there is the delicate weaving of Arthurian Legend into the overarching story line, but there is also a healthy dose of paganism in the stories. Things like oak, fire, water and stone are given a place of special importance in the story and I remember loving the thought that there is something else driving the world.

Second on my list of things that I loved is Merriman Lyon, he enters the story as the oldest of the Old Ones and he is both caring and callous, he is dangerous, powerful, and distinctly not human. His actions are other worldly. Someone who is jaded by the ability to jump randomly back and forth in time at his will. But he is not all powerful. He still has limitations and that is where the story draws in the aspirations of an eleven year old boy. During the year that I lived with my grandfather I developed a real sense of what a young man is capable of doing. And I imagined Will's quest as being something that only a young man could accomplish. Someone who wasn't jaded.

I am hesitant to talk to much about the specifics about the story, because I think that a reader would draw different things from each situations so I will close with this.

The thing that Susan Cooper's books did was make me want to be willing to see the world in a different light. To see a significance to a murder of crows or the name of a street or town. It showed me that there is meaning to things and that with a little imagination you can find it.

If you haven't read the books, start with The Dark is Rising. It is a wonderful story. It holds up and I would put its age limits at 11 to ageless.

"...And I'm working undercover for the man." -They Might Be Giants

2007-10-27T16:03:00.001-04:00

Lupo's, the concert venue that is across the street from my apartment building, is hosting "The Academy is..." tonight and the crowd outside is really hilarious.

It is all girls aged 17-19. Most of them are wearing jeans and vintage t-shirts (when I say vintage though I don't mean a t-shirt featuring Belly or Galaxie 500 or whatever on it, I mean a t-shirt that someone bought at Abercrombie or American Eagle that looks like it is five or ten years old. Most of them have pony tails and dark eye shadow and when the band came out to unload some of their equipment they let out a scream of delight.

Which got me thinking...

Do they still publish Tean Beat magazine? I know that when I was growing up if you ever made it into a girls room in high school there was a chance that you were going to be competing against Kirk Cameron, NKOTB, River Phoenix, the guys from 21 Jumpstreet, and maybe, just maybe Christian Slater.

I remember these gigantic posters that so daunting as a young guy, I mean, Christ, Jordan Knight was really imposing when his face was four feet tall.

And then, I was thinking about these little Emo bands (like these guys playing tonight, Fall Out Boy, Panic At The Disco and the rest) and I was wondering what the fuck they are told by their agents when they go on these shoots. Does their agent come call them up and lie about it. Or does he honestly say to them, "Alright guys, today we are going to be going down to the studio of Bop and Tiger Beat and they are going to do a photo shoot. Try to look alluring... It means mysteriously attractive... you know what just put on some of your chick jeans and one of those origami ball t-shirts and let's go. Fuck, I wish I never saw Jerry Maguire."

Anyway the silver lining to this is that tonight when I get out of work and walk home the streets will be teaming with teenage girls hopped up on Red Bull and Dr. Pepper.

Other news: I will be finished with The Dark is Rising tonight so look back tomorrow for my favorite things about the book. I am keeping a little notebook about it. It will be grand.

"What I need is a song to make love to." - Deep Blue Something

2007-10-26T08:21:00.000-04:00

Hold on stop the presses. Did I honestly just reference a Deep Blue Something lyric as a title? Yes. Yes I did. And folks I am not proud. But here is the thing. I, along with the friends and family of the cast, was one of the 20 people who saw Bloodrayne. But I digress.

When I get into funky moods (which I am coming out of by the way) I listen to a lot of silly romantic music. Yesterday I was listening to George Harrison's "Breath Away From Heaven" and I made the bold claim to a girl named Elizabeth that works at Taqueria Pacifica that that song was won of the prettiest songs in the world and that if you didn't like it, or at least admit it was pretty, then you were a soulless wretch and I didn't want to know you; furthermore, I also made the claim that if I was going to be making a playlist to accompany a night of love making with my dream girl then this song would be on the my shortlist for that playlist.

She howled with laughter and then we decided all the bands that couldn't go on the list. Foreigner, Journey, Mariah Carey, Paula Abdul and about another five or six. We made an exception of "Cold Hearted Snake"; which states, that if you are a girl and you are taking your dream lover from behind with a strap-on then "Cold Hearted Snake" is acceptable.

So anyway I started thinking about other songs to put on this playlist and, while I will not claim that this is a complete list, it is a good start towards a broader over arching list. Some of the choices are melodic, some are lyrical, and some are harmonic--John Popper is not on the list--but the thing to keep in mind is that they are good songs for one reason or another.

So without further ado, the list:

Dean and Britta -- "Say Goodnight"
The Guillemots -- "Annie, Let's Not Wait"
Ludwig van Beethoven -- "Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor. 'Moonlight'"
George Harrison -- "Breath Away From Heaven"
Pete Townsend -- "Let My Love Open the Door"
Keith Whitley -- "Don't Close Your Eyes"
They Might Be Giants -- "She's an Angel"
Sam Cooke -- "You Send Me"
The Beach Boys -- "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
Chris Isaak -- "Two Hearts"
Maurice Ravel -- "Bolero"

That is a pretty good start I think. And it has a little something for everyone, even my friends Josh and Rachel, who for some reason like music that is on the exact opposite of the spectrum from each other. He likes shoe gazing, indie rock, and post punk; she like country. Luckily they like each other so yeah love trumps all.

Now this is not an exhaustive list--I mean obviously it is eleven tracks. Shit I could have put five Sam Cooke songs on there alone. So if you have anything that I missed let me know. Send in your response and why.

Last thing, I should probably apologize for Bolero, but I can't. If you have seen Blake Edwards' "10" than you probably of sex when you hear this song too. And yes it is cliche, but it is a great song, so it made the list.

"Nobody knows the wreck of the soul the way you do..." New Pornographers, Challengers

2007-10-24T08:45:00.000-04:00

What a night last night. HOLY COW! Where to start? Well yesterday I worked, which, you know, is work. Not awesome.

Then I went to a concert. WHICH RULED!

I have a friend named Mauro who is a coworker of mine. He is a super funny guy, very witty and we have gotten into the habit of swapping music back and forth. So he, Lovely Wife and I went to Boston to go and see The New Pornographers. But let me back up, here is the excerpt of the email exchange between he and I when we set up the play date.

On Oct 4, 2007, at 8:06 AM, I wrote:

Mauro,
I don't know if you are interested, but New Pornographers are in Boston on Tuesday the 23rd (we have no show that night). If you are interested I could pick up some tickets to the show. If you aren't interested I will get them for myself and pick up a concert shirt for you. But it will be the lamest one possible.

Let me know tonight if you are interested.

-V

On Oct 4, 2007, at 10:45 AM, he wrote:
On Yes, yes, yes. Fuck yes! Get me a ticket. Where are they playing?
-Mauro

Now you understand the enthusiasm behind the participants. (And let me say that I would have followed through on the lame shirt promise. I would have hand delivered the stupidest looking shirt ever, and I would have done it with pride and a smile. So it is a good thing he came along.)

We met up for lunch at a restaurant in East Providence and then drove, the three of us, up to Boston for the show.

The venue was Roxy, which is about as awesome a concert hall as can be had. Really personal, I think at any point I could have reached out and touched Neko Case (but there might have been a restraining order if I had). Doors opened at about seven o'clock and my first thought was that we would be the oldest people there: we weren't, not even close as it turned out.

While we waited in line at the door there was this kid--nineteen or so--behind us who was really quite an enthusiastic youth. Very interested in Indie/Prog rock and willing to listen to other people talk about it. We had a fun little discussion about the way music blew up in the late 80's and early 90's and how after years of shit suddenly bands like Flaming Lips, Yo La Tengo, Belly, Throwing Muses, Zumpano, and Destroyer were lighting up the music scene. But it wasn't limited to those bands in the Indie genre, Hip-hop, Grunge, Rock & Roll were all changing the way we listened to music and it was a great time to be young. And this kid was eating it up. At one point I think we geeked out and started talking about our favorite TMBG songs and I can't remember exactly how he phrased it but the young kid said that we lived through the previous Indie period and knew so much. I couldn't tell if I wanted to punch him or hug him.

The show started at 7:30 with a band out of DC called Benjy Ferree. I actually can't tell if it is a band or a guy with a back up band but whatever. They were a great first act. Great energy, the lead singer was really motivated to putting on a great show--as I learned later, he is an actor so that explains why they have such a good show, theatrically. They also have a female drummer which is one of my favorite things. Don't know why but it is. They got about 45 minutes, struck their own stuff and really did a great job of rocking out. I don't know how I would describe their music, but Southern comes to mind. Not like Lynard Skynard though. Definitely not Freedom Rock. More like something you would have a Mint Julip party to. There is a cello in the band, the lead guitarist is well versed in bluegrass roots and they pulled the show off fantastically. The first thing I did when I got home was add them to my myspace page. Which says something, because I have an intense dislike for Myspace. I am listening to their album right now and I will freely admit, I am a fan, I would see them again in a minute if they came back through town.

Now in the gap between shows this curly haired kid and his trashed special lady friend came barreling through the crowd. Both of them were pretty drunk and when they finally settled it was right in the middle of me and my group of friends. So here is my proof of my age this week. When I was twenty-five I would have been pissed and let it ruin the night, I probably would have found an opportunity to sneak an elbow into kidney and would have felt vindicated. However, I didn't, as it turned out, have to do anything. When the kid settled with hysterical girlfriend, Mauro said very plainatively, "Well. That was lame." (Notice the lack of exclamation point. That is not a typo. It was said with the same enthusiasm that someone would order split pea soup.) Drunky O'Drunkihan turned around and started joking, but we are short, we needed to get closer. Mauro looked him up and down and confirmed that they guy was in fact not tall but that barging through a crowd of people, beer sloshing to and fro, hysterical girlfriend in tow, is, in fact, still lame, regardless of your vertical stature. So the kid asked if moving to the right would be okay. Mauro seemed to think that was a good idea. So they moved up in front of Nicky, who bless her heart had to keep the girl propped up with her forearm. At one point the girl turned around to me and said, through squinted eyes a beer lolling around in her hand, "I'm not trashed!" (see the exclamation point. She pointed at me, and was really defensive about it, ergo, exclamation). I looked at her, not really knowing what to make of it, and said, "Uh... okay. Cool." Unbeknownst to me Mauro and Nicky had just gotten finished talking about the girls state. I liked it better when I thought that they turned around apropos of nothing and defended herself.

Next up was Emma Pollock. Emma hails from Glasgow, Scotland (*Sigh* they talk so pretty in Scotland) and it seems, according to her website, that getting over here was a harrowing experience. They were almost sans a drummer. When Emma came on stage, I have to admit that my first thought was, "Oh Great," with plenty of sarcasm. YOu have to have seen her. Black sun dress, longish hair, nymph-y face and a black stockins with keds. I didn't expect her to be as spectacular as she was. She reminded me of Juliana Hatfield or Tanya Donnelly. Totally amazing performance. Great voice, great songs, and she ruled. There was one point where she stopped to share an amusing anecdote (god I felt 95 as I wrote that phrase) about her experience at a live show on a local radio station and a couple of groups around me (Drunky and the Trainwreck in particular) started extolling the virtue of her... Irishness. I swear sometimes I hate Americans. I was reminded of that sketch that Mike Myers used to do about "If it's not Scottish it's crap!" One of my favorites. Anyway I am digressing here. Go out and buy this album or hunt her down and find a show, you won't be disappointed. She was spectacular.

Now the main event. Wow!

You have to understand that The New Pornographers are probably my currently most played band. Three just totally bang-up, top-notch musicians; Neko Case, A.C. Newman, and Dan Bejar; and four or five great musicians; Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Todd Fancey, Kurt Dahle; who take the stage as a group and then... just kick ass. I don't even have the words to describe them. But I will say this. Go Places which is track nine on the new album might be favorite song of the last five years. And hearing it live was really really moving. I feel like a big dumb kid because I can't say enough about how awesome the show was. Carl Newman might be crazy, he might be a genius, it might be both. Neko Case could sing the 'G' pages of the yellow book and make it sound sexy. Dan Bejar sang a song on stage holding a Corona, and a shaker that was shaped like an Orange and he had my attention through the entire duration of the song. I am a guy that will forget what the fuck I am saying as I am saying it. Ask my friends they will tell you it is true. And this band had my undivided attention for 2 hours.

Challengers might be the best album of the year, it might be the best album of the last five years. I don't know. I will leave it to you. I will tell you that if you like music, like I like music, you should go and see The New Pornographers. You won't be disappointed, not one bit.

The only downside to the night was that when we got back to the car there was a forty dollar parking ticket on the windshield. Drats. Stupid resident parking.

"Won't you take me to, Funky Town."

2007-10-20T10:48:00.000-04:00

Something about the seasons in New England sets me in a weird funk around this time of year. I don't know if it is the weather change or the pressure systems that move up from the left overs of Hurricane Season in Florida, but something sends me into fits of melancholy every year right at this time. And it is starting to freak me out.

I have spent the entire morning slouching in a chair reading a book, and listening to the new Radiohead album.

I agreed to pay seven pounds for it. Which is a US equivalent of around fifteen dollars. Here's why. I want to reward the experiment. The reason that music is expensive is because it is easy to steal and people take advantage of that. But the issue for me is that if everybody paid a little bit the music would become less expensive. Anyway, this isn't a soapbox kind of day for me. I know that I have friends who think that music should be free but they are wrong. I am convinced that an artist has the right to make some money for his art, so I agree to pay for it.

Anyway In Rainbows is a great album. I really like it. Couldn't be happier, best seven quid I have ever spent, it even beats my London Monopoly board.

One last piece of news, I had promised, ages ago, a comprehensive review of one of my favorite books ever, Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising, and it should be up tonight or tomorrow. I am finishing up the book today and will have my review of the movie and book up simultaneously.

WOOT!

"It’s just a bad movie, where there’s no crying" --Okkervil River

2007-10-14T14:16:00.000-04:00

I just had the misfortune of watching The Seeker:The Dark is Rising.

As I have mentioned many times Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series is probably my favorite children's literature of all time. It blends together so many great aspects of being a child and that weird time when you turn 10 or 11 and how everything changes in your life.

The story is about a boy who is the last of the Old Ones, who are servants of the Light. They battle against the Dark. I am rereading the books now, because I wanted to be up on it when I went to the movie.

Now before I begin my review of this movie it is really important to point out that I am completely capable of separating a movie and a book. The Bourne series of movies and books are great examples of how you can take a book, deconstruct it, and then reconstruct it so that you have the essence of the book. The guys responsible for Bourne did a superb job of this. They managed to keep the angst and the fear of waking up and not knowing who you are and translate it into something that is a little more relevant. (The Bourne novels deal with the hunting of an assassin name Carlos the Jackal, who was active during the 1970's.)

The Seeker, managed to completely butcher my favorite book to the point where it was almost unwatchable.

First they took the primary characters and made them American, but living in Britain. BOO! Bad form guys. The charm of the story was that this was a normal boy who had been in the community for ages. His father was normal, a jeweler, and he came from a large family. The Seeker added a new element to the story and that was the strange folks in a strange land aspect of it.

Now I am going to lay out the things that aggravated me the most in no particular order.

1. Will Stanton. In the movie Will is 14, in the book he is 11. There is a difference; it may seem like a small difference but the difference in me when I was 10 and 14 was HUGE! At 14 I had a little more self confidence, a lot more knowledge about the world at large and I was befuddled by girls (which I will bring up later). At 10 I was... innocent I suppose. This story is about innocence. The fact that he is American versus British is something else entirely.

2. Merriman Lyon. I love Ian McShane. I think he is a wonderful actor. I am questioning the selection of his agent on this one. The portrayal of Merriman was abusive. In the book you get the sense that he is the most powerful person on the planet, wise beyond comprehension, and caring to the point of detriment. But he is not a push-over. He is the leader, in some capacity, of the Old Ones and to that end has to make tough decisions. One of the most heart-breaking scenes in the book involves the betrayal of his leige man. What the movie did was completely marginalize him. They made him one of four good fighters. But the movie clearly had Lady Greythorne as the figure head of the party, she was the stately, composed, wise one, who at one point has to make Merriman understand about the angst of young Will. It stripped the character of his nobility.

3. Maggie Barnes. In the book Maggie is not some mystery girl that Will idolizes. She is a villain from the start. I don't know if they needed a token pretty girl in the movie to appeal to people but it was pretty unnecessary.

4. The Rider. Bravo to Chris Ecclestone for bringing The Rider to life. What an incredible actor who pulls of creepy and disarming at the same time.

5. Family. This is a big one. In the book Will is the youngest of the family. He doesn't have a ridiculous foil of a twin brother. It is true that there was a brother named Tom, but the story line is that he was the first of the children and died after three days. Not some bull crap about a twin brother... blech... sorry I had to throw up in my mouth. The movie has this running subplot where Will's father is a physicist who was once writing a paper on the battles of Light and Dark. And then whoops, one of my babies got kidnapped and we never found him. It makes for an interesting plot device later in the movie; but also one that is contrived and poorly executed.

6. Americana. I don't know why Hollywood felt compelled to Americanize this movie but it killed it for me. When I read these books I was 13 or 14 and traveling cross country for my great-grandmothers 90th birthday. These books built a vision of the British Isles that I have carried in my head since then. Names like Cornwall and Wales still make me think of faeries, magic and mysticism. The book took a story about a young british boy and made him approachable to me. It helped globalize the world for me. With a young American Will, they have taken this movie into an us against them world. The villains and assistant heros are now both British and the noble American stands alone. I know I am reaching on this, but The Dark is Rising didn't need it.

7. Last I am curious and nervous to see how they come up with the incorporate the last of the books into movies, if they do that. They have changed the anchor of the story so drastically that I am afraid it will require more radical departure.

Anyway. The movie itself wasn't actually that bad, but my advice is that if you loved the stories, don't see the movie. If you go to the movie and see it and love it, maybe you will like the books I don't know? but I know that I find it impossible to separate the two and it is a giant black mark against an otherwise three star movie.

Final rating. Two stars. And they do nothing, they just sit there pissed off that they have to rate this movie.

"Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo...domo"

2007-10-12T15:42:00.000-04:00

I have had the pleasure (such as it is) to have Styx racing through my brain for two solid days.

I was working as one of the hosts for a convention of business innovators that took place in Providence. The conference was called the BIF-3, or Business Innovation Summit.

Now I am going to just come right out and say this. I hate conventions, as a rule of thumb I would rather be picking pumpkins or standing around leaning against a wall; however, the BIF summit is very interesting, because they don't spend an inordinate amount of time talking about returns on equity, profit margins, "cap-ex" budgets or any other kind of meaningless shit that talking heads say when they want to obfuscate that they make money and don't really understand why. The point of the conference is to talk about their experiences innovating their respective fields and what they did to become leaders or how they handled difficulties in their businesses.

But that is not the point of the this post, it is a qualifier to tell you where I was when I was hit this thought that I am going to lay out for you.

I think that certain segments of humanity are much closer to being cyborg than we might perceive. For two days I watched people plugged into all manner of blue-tooth, cell phone, mobile laptop computing gizmo that has been invented, and some that probably aren't on the market yet.

I had to look-up the word cyborg just to remind myself what the actual definition was and I was a little shocked. I was mostly amazed that the definitions listed in the link provide no mention of the level of integration; simply, that it mentions that someone for whom physiological processes are aided or enhanced by technological means.

So I am going to join the growing bandwagon and say that we--the royal, all-encompassing we--are cyborgs.

I come to this conclusion using communication as my physiological process of choice. I think, although have no proof, that most anthropologists would put homo-sapiens' ability to communicate as one of the principal factors in our rapid ascent to the being dominant species on the planet, and when I look at the way we communicate with each other the proof seems to be beyond denial.

Cell phones have become ubiquitous in the United States; so much so that even middle school students have them in prodigious quantities. They are everywhere; at the mall, at the dentist, at the conference I was working, in the movies (much to my chagrin) and at the bus stop. But they aren't limited to vocal communication anymore either; look at the growing dominance of text messages, phone email applications, and instant messaging.

Just this morning I was able to text message my friend Adam who lives in Chicago to find out who the stop-time animator behind Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts was; Ray Harryhausen, but he didn't know, I had to call a friend in New York. It is amazing that I can send an instant thought, no matter how banal, to someone who lives a thousand miles away.

But it doesn't stop with cell phones and text messages. MMO Games, like World of Warcraft, represent a different class of this same phenomenon. Except that it is worse. With an MMO not only do you allow technology to be your voice (as with a cell phone) you are also allowing it to be the medium for your physique and personality as well. I know whole groups of people for whom WoW is more than a hobby. They measure time spent playing the game in days per week because it is just easier, and they have two versions of their personality that they live; they have an on-line self and real world self and they are often very very very different.

Even as I sit here typing out this blog post I am amazed at the number of people that may (or may not) read it. Technology has completely, unalterably changed the way we communicate with each other. I remember a time at work when our voice mail and computers were down and one of the portfolio managers I worked with started to have a first rate freak-out attack. It was sort of funny watching fifty year old man having a temper tantrum, and he asked, with all earnestness, "What are we going to do with the voicemail out? How am I supposed to know who called?"

We handed him a blank notebook and a pen.

"Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up. Yum!"

2007-10-08T21:37:00.000-04:00

Barnes and Barnes, folks. Little known factoid. I am convinced that Bill "Game Over Man" Paxton was in the video for Fish Heads.

Anyway. Lovely Wife and I were out on Saturday before I had to go to work. We were walking down by the Mosshasuk River here in Providence and, as she mentioned, we got to watch a shit load of fish die. It was freaky. The best part about it, for me, was that they were dying just before this big installation art piece called Waterfire was about to get going.

Waterfire is/are (I am not really sure about the agreement on this one, is Waterfire the whole event, and therefore singular; or is each individual instance a water fire in and of itself and then plural? My grammar class is running away with my life.) this series of floating barbeque pits that sit on the river in Providence and during the fall they put wood in them and light them on fire and then people walk along the river, buy overpriced concessions and listen to music. I hate it.

But it isn't the installation itself that I can't stand. It is everything else. I actually think that the sight of waterfire itself is really lovely, but there is this whole other event that goes along with it.

I hate it most of all because of what the site looks like afterwards. IT LOOKS LIKE A FUCKING TORNADO ROCKED IT! But not an Oklahoma Twister, or a Kansas Oz Special. No! It looks like a giant capitalistic, money-grubbing, entrepreneurial whirlwind of greed (okay maybe that is a bit heavy handed) took hold and shook the shit out of the city.

But the saddest part is that the river has this shimmering patina of oil and lighter fluid and petrol from the boats and I have a really hard time swallowing the dichotomy of people going out to enjoy the night air with such wreckless disregard for the next day.

I suppose that WaterFire is really a giant metaphor for us all though. The overwhelming message I get is, "Don't worry about tomorrow, because isn't right now, very very pretty?"

Ugh!

On a positive note I have finished five days of Marlowe at this point. All in a row. Some of the segments I like more than others. Some of them are rushed and some of them could use a little more fleshing out; the office scene on part three comes to mind immediately. The exercise, however, isn't wasted on me. One of the things that is happening is that I am setting aside time to write and that can't be a bad thing.

Last thing I will say tonight (for a couple of days but keep checking in on Marlowe, and let me know what you think.

I am going to see The New Pornographers at the end of the month and I didn't think I could be more excited. Then I heard three albums from two bands. The first band, Bishop Allen, has two albums which might be two of the best I have listened to from start to finish. They are called Broken String and Charm School. It is a great cohesive intelligent album. If you don't own it and you like Okkervil River and/or The Decemberists and The Shins, then buy one of the albums right away. The other band is called Sea Wolf and the album is called Leaves in the River. Again, really great stuff from start to finish. Own it, embrace it, call it George.

"What'll be revealed today when we peer into the great unknown..."

2007-10-04T10:32:00.000-04:00

Today's title is from The Laws Have Changed by The New Pornographers. Who are coming to my area at the end of the month and I am really quite psyched about it.

But that is not the point of the post today. I have changed (again!) the purpose of my other blog called Marlowe's Sketchpad because I am not using it. I think that in nearly I year I have posted about 6 things on it. Which is absurd and sad.

So here is what is going to happen. I have crap running through my head nearly constantly about things I see or experience when I run around town. Sometimes they make it into my little moleskine book and sit there to rot until I find them later and try to remember what the hell I was doing when I decided to write, "A redhead who seems ten years older than she is," (for example).

So now I have a character named Marlowe. He lives in a world very similar to this one and he has experiences that may or may not be similar to mine. One thing is for certain, his love of watches mirrors mine, however his disposable income allows him to indulge in that love, mine does not. Outside of that, Marlowe and I have almsot nothing in common. If Marlowe has a bad day, I don't want people who know me to wonder what is going on in my life.

Anyway. This is going to be an ongoing experiment for me. As some of you know I have started taking some writing courses through Writer's Digest Online Workshops and my hope is that this will also be a place to sit and put to practice that which I am learning.

I would appreciate comments from anybody who has them, any suggestions on what Marlowe should be doing will be given serious consideration, but I will promise you that he will never masturbate or fornicate in the blog, so save your time and don't suggest it.

One of the other things that I am prone to doing with my writing is to write like I speak, which is to say filled with expletives, and since I am trying to break myself of that filthy habit I will also be trying to write curse free. Yikes!

Anyway stay tuned and find out more about Marlowe and what he is up to where he is going and who he meets. I am going to attempt to update daily by midnight eastern time.

"It's time to bring this ship into the shore, And throw away the oars, forever."

2007-09-27T10:35:00.000-04:00

Title from Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore by REO Speedwagon.

I have started rowing lessons recently. We, by we I mean Lovely Wife and me, have been doing it for about two weeks now and I am going to come right out and admit that it might be my favorite sport I have ever participated in. It has everything I love in sports; outdoors, teamwork, the ability to be a part of something bigger than you can be on your own and pain like you have never experienced in the recovery process.

Holy crap! I am sore in places I think I forgot I had and am really relishing it. I think I posted back about nine or so months ago that I was going to try and go to the gym more since I was paying for a membership and it was going to waste more or less.

But I have been negligent in that desire and I know why now. I fucking hate gyms. I hate being cooped up in a stinky, gym smelling place while I have to watch people around me grimace and sweat or worse sit and talk about their day; dirty laundry, shopping lists, infidelity, boredom. Just shut up and work out for crying out loud. But out on the river you don't have the idiotic drone of the morning political pundits to power you through the work out. You have only the sound of slide, and the deafening swoosh as you heave your body back to power your oars through the water. This is my kind of work out.

To top it all off I got to witness the sunrise and the moonset in the same hour today. That is pretty special. I got back to my house at 7:30 am knowing that I did more in the first two hours of my day than I probably will in the last eight.

On a similar note, I really like my grammar class and can already notice a difference, more conscientious technique to my writing. Now I am looking at matching the number of my pronouns and nouns and making sure that the verb tense gives the sentence the exact feel that I want. This week we are going over adjectives and adverbs.

Last thing I will say today. I am a Mac user. Most of these posts come from my black MacBook. When I bought it I purchased the extended hoity-toity warranty and I am thankful for it today. I discovered a small crack on the top of the computer near the keyboard and I took it to the Apple store at the Providence Place Mall and the manager there, a guy named Eric Mills, was great and today at 12:20 I am going to dash my computer in for a little facelift. The point of that whole paragraph is to say that Apple beats out PCs in my book if for no other reason than their customer service help. Wow! Seriously I wish I could file a claim against both Dell and Microsoft to reclaim all the time I have spent on the phone talking to one of their "technical repair specialists."

That's it for me right now.

Here is a blog you should check out. Madame Z is one of my favorite contributers to Six Sentences and somehow I never knew she had a blog. It is fun reading if you keep up with her 6S posts.

"Conjunction Junction what's your function?"

2007-09-22T00:26:00.000-04:00

Hey a little school house rocks never hurt anybody, right?

Anyway I am finally off my high horse and back in internet college. I am taking an online writer's workshop through Writer's Digest. It is a class in the basics of grammar, because I am really interested it being better at it but I feel like I write and talk like a carny sometimes; outside of my use of who and whom which was, miraculously, the only thing I took from my high school grammar classes.

So far it is going swimmingly. We are on the third lecture, which is the lecture on verbs, and I have to say I really like it. But I have trouble with some of the examples from time to time.

Anyway more later.

"i was only watching, yes i love you more undressed"

2007-09-03T09:03:00.000-04:00

Title provided by Lloyd Cole from the song Undressed

Okay. I am off to the races on this one. No one has ever accused me of being a feminist, I have been accused of being a chauvinist tons, but never a feminist; and despite that fact I am absolutely revolted by this poster that I saw floating around town over the last week.

I have nothing to say except to say that if this is appropriate advertising we are fucking DOOMED!

There are so many things that are wrong with this that I hardly know where to begin; so here is a little list, in no particular order.

A girl with her panties coming off? Is that a message that we want to send to our young woman? Our daughters, our sisters, our nieces, and cousins; I sure fucking hope not.
Girls 18, Guys 19? Its like descriminating for all the wrong reasons. Shit, I feel like I am taking crazy pills here. GIRLS, YOU KNOW WHY THEY LET YOU IN YOUNG RIGHT? Jesus Christ help us all we are fucking DOOMED!
"Proper Dress Required." That is what it says right down there on the bottom of the poster, right after the phone number for the place. When I was in college, proper dress meant Khakis, a button down shirt, a blazer and maybe a tie. Tennis shoes were also not allowed. You had to look like you stepped out of a Brooks Brother Catalog. Proper dress at this place seems to involve underwear and not much else. Seriously folks. If I was a father and my daughter went out dressed like the girls that go to this place dress: I would ground her until she was 35. But the guys aren't any better. Proper dress for the guys means putting on your $300 ripped jeans and your nice layered-popped-collar-combo. Jeez I just threw up in my mouth.

The saddest part of this whole thing is that I feel like a fucking fuddy duddy. An old windbag. Yuck. We are doomed. DOOMED!

I don't know where the silver lining is so today I am going to go kayacking with a friend of mine and hope to G-d that I find something that makes me believe in the redemption of humanity.

Proper dress... pssh.

"It's time to bring this ship into the shore, And throw away the oars, forever."

2007-09-02T15:21:00.000-04:00

Title provided by REO Speedwagon's Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore

CNN.com is featuring a video of a plane crash in Poland where two pilots died.

Folks this is wrong. We shouldn't be watching videos where planes crash and people die.

I don't want to get on a big diatribe about it but I will say this. We are doomed, as a species I mean, if this is news worthy material.

I am not a person who usually says we should pray about things, but I will certainly keep the families of those two pilots today.

I wish there was a way to globally boycott news when they do this.

On a not morally outraged note:

I took a free rowing lesson yesterday morning. It was about the most fun I think I have had in a while. I have been thinking about Oxford Blues for about two days non-stop. One of those classic 80's Americana movies. Something that is kind of interesting is that shortly after the movie came out--well within three years at any rate--there was a mutiny caused by some unpleasantries involving Americans on the Oxford Crew. For some strange reason I have read about this particular event a lot lately (I assume in part because this would be the 20th anniverary of the event. Long and short the Americans were given a bit of a bad wrap, they were spectacular oarsmen and when it came time to actually race a British Oarsman was taken from his preferred side of the boat to make way for a the President of the club; blah blah blah chaos ensued and the Oxford team beat Cambridge by making some pretty stunning, and illogical, decisions.

Back to the moral outrage.

I can't find Oxford Blues on DVD. Drats.

2007-08-26T21:39:00.000-04:00

There have been some news stories circulating lately that have made me, as my friend Guth says, "Launch into cartwheels of rage."

First was an article on CNN.com a couple of days ago titled US Officials Rethink Hopes for Iraq Deomcray. The gist of the article is that the region isn't stable enough to support a democracy and maybe stability should be our primary concern.

Hmmm... Isn't that why the CIA put Sadam Hussein in power in the first place. I am not going to try to defend Hussein, I think he was as vile a human being as there ever was, but I am not sure that I understand the logic of destabilizing a country just to get a different military dictator in position. I have a ton of opinions about the whole Iraq issue and one of them involves troop withdrawal. And the short of it is that, at the expense of sounding contrary, we have an obligation to be there at this point. Waltzing in, destroying the stability of a country and then saying something to the effect of, "Whoops, my bad, good luck," is about the worst PR move the US government could do; and in all honesty if the world revolted againsts us because of it, I wouldn't blame them.

(And just in case some lonely FBI agent intern has to read this blog post and make notes on whether or not I might be a terrorist. I am not, I am just pissed off enough to consider voting again and you should take a good long look at your life if your job, your bread winning fucking job is to read shitty blog posts like this all day. That said, I hope you had a nice weekend; I did, I went to a water park in New Hampshire--in a Ford Mustang.)

The second article that had me all bollocks up was about everybody's favorite dog killing quarterback, Michael Vick.

Gist of this turd of news is that the NAACP said that Michael Vick shouldn't lose his job for being a conspirator and financial backer of a dog fighting kennel; and on top of that, killing dogs through "collaborative efforts".

Here is why he is wrong.

Michael Vick is an ambassador of the National Football League. He has engaged in an act of atrocity so profane (killing animals for no other reason than joy and pleasure) that the NFL and the Atlanta Falcons (who have stuck with him through two gigantic rehabilitations) have had to endure three months of the worst publicity possible. If either one of them didn't take the action of suspending his contract or firing him can you even imagine the shit storm of bad PR that they would have to put up with. If I was in charge of either organization I would shit-can on principal, let alone legality. He is a dick-head and a chump.

The thing is that Vick should have been smarter.

This really gets me riled up.

(See FBI Person, I am not a bad guy, I drive American cars, and like dogs. Here is another link you should check out. It is a picture of my favorite breed of dog from the AKC:the Bulldog. Since we are having this moment, I don't know when it became my favorite but it is pretty recently. I used to only like Golden Retrievers and Labradors, but for some reason I like Bulldogs lately.)

"Well nothing ever went, Quite exactly as we planned"

2007-08-20T22:12:00.000-04:00

Title provided by Modest Mouse from Missed the Boat.

This weekend was spent in nearly equal parts writing, reading and rocking. I have been working on a story that involves... well never mind because talking about it insures that it will never be completed. Ever. But I am up to a little over ten pages of material on a short story that will hopefully be ready for a send off to someplace publishy in a couple of months. Once I get the story finished I am giving myself three weeks for editing and rereading. The Mantra I am repeating to myself is, "Enough is as good as a feast." I don't know where I heard it but it seems relevant lately.

I have been reading Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass and it is absolutely riveting stuff. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody who is interested in the speculative fiction or children's literature genres.

And now on the juicy stuff. Here in the great northeast they had a music festival this weekend called the Download Festival. Weak name right? The festival itself was pretty... well it was lame, there was not much to do (outside of listening to the band, give me a second I will get there) and when you are dealing with a ten hour music festival you either need to have options in case a band sucks or something. Also the marketing guy should be taken out and savagely beaten about his head, neck and shoulders.

This Saturday was about the nicest day of the summer here in the Northeast and it was a marquee day for an outdoor music concert festival. And the amphitheater was maybe 2/3rds full. Maybe. On the outside figure. It was sad.

The shows started at 1:00 o'clock on a stage that was built in one of the parking lots.
So here is the lineup: Apollo Sunshine, Bang Camaro, Band of Horses, and Wolf Parade.

At about 5:30 they moved the conert to the covered amphitheater where the big guns were brought out.
Line up included: Neko Case, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Guster, and Modest Mouse.

Now I will openly admit that I was there to see Wolf Parade and Modest Mouse. I love them both equally; although Modest Mouse has a larger repertoire of music and so I find myself falling back on them more than I do Wolf Parade. Anyway there were bands that I had heard of but never really given a fair shake to (Yeah yeah yeahs, Band of Horses and Neko case) and bands that I had never heard of period (Apollo Sunshine, Bang Camaro and Guster; although I think I knew a little something aobut Guster but I will get to that in a second).

The bands I went to see did not disappoint I don't know what else to say about Modest Mouse that I haven't said previously but they still rocked out hard and Lovely Wife had an interesting observation about Isaac Brock. She thinks that he plays guitars and sings to keep himself from punching people he doesn't like. I thought it was a funny observation.

The bands that I had heard of did not disappoint and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs made an instant fan out of me, they rock out harder than any of the other bands there. Absolutely high energy from start to finish. Great job by them.

Neko Case is beautiful and her voice is a positively angellic. I think I might have fallen in love with her--sorry lovely wife--at any rate I am not a huge fan of the alt country scene but I love her work with AC Newman and the rest of the New Pornographers crowd and I was dually impressed by her solo stuff and have to admit I was a little rash in my judgement of the alt country scene.

Band of Horses and Wofl Parade both have new albums coming out soon and I will be eagerly picking them up. Neither band disappointed but the venue was tough... I mean come on they were playing a fucking parking lot.

(Which reminds me of a game that Lovely Wife and I play, and subsequently introduced our friend Amy Guth to. It is called ROCK OUT! and it involves coming up with the lamest places ever and trying to make a rock and roll entrance for them; example, "City of Des Moines Public Library are you ready to blow the roof off? OWWWwwww! Now the trick is that it has to be someplace that a crowd would congregate. So making one for a transfer station wouldn't be good because who hangs out at the transfer station. But American Legion Post 357 is totally fair game. I guess in writing it out it isn't that fun... no fuck that it rocks and I still do four years later.)

Now for the bad news. Bang Camaro is, as near as I can tell, an 80's hair metal revival band whose claim to fame is that they are on a video game called Guitar Hero. They are not my cup of tea. I am not going to say they are good or bad because it isn't my music, but they did give me first exposure to the nine dollar personal Papa Gino's pizza at Great Woods. Apollo Sunshine equals Hippy Jam Band they played three songs in thirty-five minutes. Ugh. Nuff said.

Now for Guster. These guys weren't very good, but they weren't very bad and they fall into that category of music that comes along every couple of years and grips the high school crowd and makes them want to listen to music and care about their lives. For me the band was Gin Blossoms. I can remember listening to Hey Jealousy and wanting to sing it to an ex-girlfriend. I used to drive around the desert in my home town and there was this path that led out into the base of a mountain near a big run off point that we called Alison Road.

Guster are the Gin Blossoms for the graduating class of 2007. They weren't bad, but you know I am passed that point in my life where unrequited love is an issue and I am happy for it. I don't know that I would rush out and buy a Guster album but I don't think I would tell my cousin Cole that he shouldn't. Does that make sense.

Anyway, the highlight of the concert for me was how empty the house was. I am in house management as a career and seeing a performance that was as empty as most of these were was sad. I mean really really really sad. And it affects the intensity of the show.

More tomorrow...

"He moves his words like a prize fighter..."

2007-08-17T10:15:00.000-04:00

Cake, Shadow Stabbing. One of the best songs ever.

New post up on Six Sentences. As always thanks to Rob.

I didn't realize how long it had been since my last post; I don't have an excuse, not really, just a general malaise accompanied with a near psychotic obsession on a renewed hobby that nets me about 65 to 70 points on the Official Geek Test.

"A man in Kentucky sure is lucky..."

2007-07-17T15:58:00.000-04:00

Special thanks to Neko Case for the title.

I have been in Kentucky visiting my grandfather for the last week; and it went swimmingly. I got to do plenty of stuff that I grew up doing, gun clubs, greasy fried food, drives in the country and almost an entire evening on the porch swing. There is something really pleasant about living out in the country.

Russell Springs, which is the town my grandfather lives in, is about 20,000 people, most of them are family, if not immediately than distantly. There is a reservoir lake which when filled up draws a pretty great crowd of boaters, fishers and miscellaneous watersports (not in the gross XXX way either) enthusiasts. It is also a gastronomic wasteland. Unless you like fried food or white gravy you are epically screwed.

I will post more on the later (kiss of death, which to followers of this blog means that is the last you will hear of it).

I am at the airport in Louisville, home of the Kentucky Derby and the Superman Tower ride that has been in the news lately. The airport here is small -- two terminals, maybe thirty gates -- but they have a nice and cheap internet pass which has an hour left on it so I figured I would get something up here quick.

The highlight of the trip for me was a couple of things I learned while I was here:

1. Family is really important. I reconnected with some of my cousins, whom I have been out of touch with for far too long, and it was great to see them. I really hope that I can be more committed to seeing them more than I have been in the past.

2. July 4th is not in the Bible. No kidding? The thing that tickled about this tidbit isn't the fact itself. I think anybody who knows anything about America, or the bible, knows that July 4th has very little biblical significance. What surprised was the length of the conversation to ascertain that truth. It was really only about four minutes, but it was four minutes that shouldn't have happened. The funny thing about it was that it ended with this quote, "No, Jerry, July 4th is a man holiday. The Good Lord didn't even know that the United States was going to be a country back then."

This is funny for a couple of reasons. The first is that the conversation that preceded it was one about the inevitability of armageddon (which was funny because while I was there I was reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett), which quoted an awful lot of text from the Book of St. John's Revelations. Now if you are going to talk about the book of bible that deals with the PREDICTION OF ARMAGEDDON how could then turn and say that The Good Lord possibly couldn't know something. The second thing was that the people that were talking had trouble distinguishing the authors of the bible. I will concede divine inspiration to a degree and I have learned, the hard way, to argue with people who have a lot of a faith (in anything, one way or the other). But come on; this whole argument was so filled with fallacious reasoning that it defies logic. If you are going to say that G-d wrote the bible, and that he is all knowing how can you ridicule someone for asking if July 4th is in the bible? If you are going to say that TGL "didn't even know..." about July 4th, then you have just invalidated your entire argument for the relevance of the bible at all.

3. Russell Springs is having a Soul Harvest. Which is a Young Peoples Christian Round up. Luckily I escaped with my heathenistic values firmly in place. I think the name Soul Harvest was what I found funny.

4. Last thing I learned Guthries Float Shop in Jamestown, Kentucky is a gem of Russell County and might have the best milk shake I have ever had. It was a vanilla shake made with iced coffee and honey. And, doctor, was it good.

5. I really ought to listen to NPR, and their affiliate stations, more. Great news coverage, great music and generally just a nice experience.

6. The people in the MLS are geniuses. I had three conversations with people who were talking about "That David Becksham" (sic, or the typo is intentional). They don't know who he is, or what it means, but they are talking about Becks and Posh (to a much smaller extent) and they know that he plays soccer and that it is called Footsball (again intentional typo) in England.

Personally I think it is going to be the first coffin nail, in a series of many, for the MLS. But they have people in a town that is dominated by gunsports, fishing and American football talking about soccer. Kudos to that, NOW DO SOMETHING WITH IT!

7. The folks at Art and Crafts Records are positively my favorite right now. Pre-releasing the the new Stars album to try and beat the pirates was brilliant and get this: IT IS A GREAT ALBUM TO BOOT!

So last thing I will mention here. Lovely Wife and I got to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix before I left for Kentucky and it was great. Better than Transformers and I am not sure what the buzz of the rest of the world is, but I really liked it. There were some things that I thought could have been added, but you are dealing with a novel that was about 800 pages and that is tough to do succinctly and I thought they did a great job. Five out of Five summer movie stars. (4.5 out of 5 winter movie stars and, yes, in both cases the stars will cast a Patronum Charm that looks like a movie reel).

Hope everybody is having a great summer.

"Transformers, more than meets the eye..."

2007-07-04T11:16:00.000-04:00

I saw Transformers last night. Because I am whore to The Man, because I like it when stuff explodes, and because my favorite part of the summer is mindless fun action movies.

It was the best movie I have seen in six months. It completely and utterly rocked. I haven't seen a movie that good (by summer movie standards) since I saw the first Pirates of the Caribbean. It had everything, amazing special effects, hot girls, dopey guys that win in the end, weird parents, and ROBOTS THAT TURN INTO CARS.

The movie, which I have described as a shameless commoditization of my youth, did a great job of recognizing the audience and threw in several nods to the TV show and comic where possible. It was spectacular.

On the sumer movie scale I give it 5 out of 5 stars (but they turn into little pyramid dancing robots, too.)

If you like to turn your mind off and just be entertained for two hours, then you might consider missing it. Or at least paying matinee prices.

"Always the last to know..."

2007-06-18T19:11:00.000-04:00

Del Amitri and Me. That is what my understanding is today; because, apparently someone issued a memo that says it is okay now to wear your pajamas whenever you want. Which is really sad to me--that I didn't get the memo I mean--because I love wearing pajamas. I mean, first off, who doesn't like to be comfortable all the time in loose fitting flannel pants. I know I sure do. But apparently, as evidenced by the jackhole in the Kennedy Plaza Bus Depot, they make pajama shorts that you can wear around out in public now too.

Ugh... Doomed.

I discovered a new site today--which means, naturally, that everybody else has known about it for ages. It is called Five Chapters, and it is a great online literature site. Look at some of the authors that have contributed:

Josh Emmons
Jennifer Egan
Aimee Bender
Anthony Swofford
Ben Greenman

It's like a who's-who of authors that I wish I could be--except for Anthony Swofford;who, I am sure, has seen shit that you just can't unsee and I don't need that. Anyway if you like reading and are into submitting writing then... WOW how can you not be excited about this site.

What they do is put up a short story in five serialized installments Monday through Friday. I read about six of them today, all of them were fantastic. Check it out.

I started working "banker's hours" this week and I have to come clean: I kind of hate it. I had been working Wednesday to Sunday, mostly in the evenings and usually two ten to twelve hour days and three six hour days and I loved it. Now I am Monday to Friday eight to four and I am already bored: it is day four. This is going to be a long arduous summer.

The good news: the theater where I work is starting to talk about some of the concepts for our shows next season and it is going to be very, very exciting. So at least I have something to which I can look forward.

So I am going to put up a list of books and albums that I am listening to so that people can keep track (or check them out if they are interested); I will also be giving an on-deck circle for books I will be starting when I am finished with the currently started book.

Right now I am reading two books. The first, is Good Omens, written by Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchett. The Second is The Loss of Leon Mead, by Josh Emmons.

Now it may seem odd that I JUST DISCOVERED a website featuring Emmons' work and I am reading his book at the same time. If you are paying attention, you are probably saying, Shenanigans, V., SHE-NANIGANS! The truth is that Josh Emmons is a friend of a friend of mine and my friend has been NOT pushing the book on me nearly as hard he should have been because it is a brilliant piece of writing. (As it should be considering Josh's pedigree from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, a place that I will sadly never attend. Woe is I.)

My on-deck circle is currently occupied by The Golden Compass, by Phillip Pullman, which is going to be made into a movie soon.

I am a big fan of children's fantasy, and I am thrilled to say it all started with Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising. I know I do a lot of jaw boning about entire post about this or entire post about that, but I think the time is right for me to follow through and sit down and write an entire post about something meaningful, and this is it. So stay tuned, sometime this week.

Currently I am listening to Lovely Wife's Eighties mix that is on her iPod, but I spent my work today catching up on some Power Pop and Retro sounding stuff. I highly recommend the albumWelcome Interstate Managers to anybody. Fountains of Wayne has been one of my favorite bands since Radiation Vibe came out in the mid-nineties and in all honestly it helped get across the country in my first big move from New Mexico to Florida. The other album I was listening to is called Under The Influence Of Giants a self titled album by... well it is self-titled so figure it out. Great 80's sound to these guys, I literally had iTunes say you like [some band I don't remember] so you should check out this band and I did and I am thrilled with them.

"We've lost the plot and we just can't choose. "

2007-06-16T22:34:00.000-04:00

I don't know how time gets away from me sometimes but it does and I logged on to the dashboard, on accident, and saw that it has been 12 days since my last posting which is reprehensible.

So the move-in is nearly complete. Well, the move-in is nearly complete in-so-far-as I am finally sick of seeing things that I own and can't remember where I picked them up so I am starting to throw things away willy-nilly (never a good thing). I threw away my college portfolio today--well I threw away the boring parts, my service essay, which started off, I hate doing this, but you told me I can't graduate with out it (or something really similar). I was startled at how impetuous I was when I was in my early twenties. Most of essays that I was rereading start off similarly, a recurring theme is: Can't you guys see how smart I am I want a degree without having to work for it, so why don't I give you thirty grand you give me a slip of paper and we will call it even.

I think hindsight and humility have given me a better perspective on some of those years and how anybody suffered my presence is a real testament to their character.

One of the things that I found were some old play that I wrote. One of them was about two vampires (because you know, closet goth) having late night dinner and talking about being in Love. It wasn't bad, and it was great to reinforce my confidence a bit. Another thing I found was a paper that I wrote called "The Inevitability of the Civi War" and it was an essay saying that slavery had very little to do with the civil war and it was mostly an economic issue that culminated in war and when the North was losing, it turned into a civil rights movement. The paper was typed up one night, probably the night before it was due, and it was absolute rubbish. The teacher marked it up for grammar--commas missing, wrong homophone, that sort of thing--which has never really been my strong point. On the back she wrote that it was a good piece and that it needed more work, but (and this is the part to pay attention to) I could probably be very good if I would take my time and use the revision process.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.... It is humiliating to think that if I had read that back when I was twenty-one things might have ended up differently. But the truth of the matter is that I don't know that I read the back of the paper. I probably looked at the front, said great a B, I passed, then put it away and never looked at it again. Oh well. You can't change the past. Right?

Other news. I have been doing a tremendous amount of writing later and am hoping to have some stuff to start sending off for journals. I think I have come to the conclusion that the genre I most identify with is Fantasy and that as much as I would like to be a narrative writer in the style of say, Kenzaburo Oe or Jose Saramago or Orhan Pamuk, it is probably just as well that I am incapable of finishing a story about regular life. But if you give me a story about an ill-intentioned toy store and I can bang out two thousand words in about an hour.

I will keep this site updated with news as I get it. In the meantime I keep getting stuff up on the Six Sentences site and they have a contest coming up that I am going to enter and see what shakes out.

I have been listening to a lot of music lately and have a couple of albums to recommend.

Mew, Frengers
The Fratellis, Costello Music
Travis, The Boy With No Name
Blonde Redhead, 23
Air, Pocket Symphony

[This is a total sidenote to the post, but I remembered the tag for an open list without having to look at my little HTML tag cheating site. I am quite pleased with myself.]

I was a pleased to see the Travelling Wilbury's have rereleased their albums. It is long over due and greatly appreciated. Here is the thing that was funny about the Wilbury's; it was probably the first super group I remember. Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne. How is that for a line-up. And they made really fun music. I am not a fan of any of them singularly--except Harrison, who I think is a G-d--but I really liked the Wilbury's; so much so that I actually wore my tape through. So I am happy that I have it anew.

One last thing that I was hit with the other day, I reconnected with one of my best friends in the entire world. But one, who lives in another state, and who I just don't email or talk to all that often. We had about an email exchange about what we are reading and then a phone call about some old business thing that we were involved with a long time ago. Anyway it was to talk to him again and it makes me feel like a schmuck when I am too lazy to pick up the phone and talk to my friends. Lesson learned.

"Help, I need somebody. Help, not just anybody..."

2007-06-04T09:32:00.000-04:00

Marlowe's Sketchpad has an update.

Here is the story on it. I hate it. There are bits and pieces that I adore, but I got lost somewhere, or rather I lost the plot and I haven't been able to get anywhere back to where I was when I started it. It is just brutal having something started, and not being able to finish it.

So I am asking for help. Help me get back on track. Do ditch the crazy girl? I don't know, all I know is that I feel like the story isn't worth telling, because we have all heard it already.

Do you know what I mean?

If you have any thoughtful ideas post them on the sketchpad and I will check back. This is something that I want to finish, but damn it all I am just stuck... STUCK STUCK STUCK!

H-E-L-P!

2007-06-03T08:42:00.001-04:00

For the first time in my life (since I have been out of college and on my own) I have central air conditioning.

I can't even tell you how exciting this is. Yesterday was stifling. It was one of those ridiculously humid days where the air hangs thick and you can cut it with a machete. I was running around for most of the day trying to help get things set up for this big black tie affair that happened at the theater where I work. The good news is that it went off without a hitch, I had a lot of people that I did a good job. I was pretty psyched. I like doing good jobs.

The cool part was that one of the people who was an honoree was Olympia Dukakis. Which was awesome. She has been in plays a couple of times at the theater and she was the recipient of the lifetime achievement award and she gave this awesome two minute speech about fighting for things. It was pretty amazing. So this year I have met three no shit big time stars. In December I got to meet Billy Peterson, of CSI fame; Amy Morton, who is one of the most remarkable directors/actresses I have ever seen; and now Olympia Dukakis. Wow! What a year. I can't wait until next year. I am going to hold out for Richard Dean Anderson.

My new apartment is incredible it takes me four minutes to round trip to work. I left the soiree last night and was in bed fifteen minutes later. (That included a shower.)

I know I promised a post about my experience in Ikea, I am still working on it. It will be an epic post when it comes out.

Last thing. I have been reading a lot of the Neil Gaiman website lately. He has a great journal that he updates nearly everyday, access to short stories, updates on the movie Stardust (which is a film adaptation of one his novels). All in all a great website. One of the things I like best is the Q&A that he has on there. A lot of the questions offer some really great advise for young writers (young in career that is). I would encourage everyone to check it out if they get the chance.

2007-05-30T06:10:00.000-04:00

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I had two pieces on six sentences coming in rapid fire succession.

Here is the second at Six Sentences.

In other news:

Last week in a post titled Meat Is Murder I told everybody about my experiment of not eating meat (sans fish) and how I went to some friends house and they made chili and I didn't want to make a stink so I just ate it. Well that happened again last night.

In the interest of science, that is to say that one experiment is not very scientific, I conducted the experiment again. And again the results were disastrous. Imagine if you will being a small child, making a baking soda volcano and instead of using two teaspoons of baking soda for your volcano you accidently use five tablespoons. When you pour in the liquid, it overflows violently and there is goo and ooze everywhere.

That is how I feel.

In experimental terms: the results have been verified. (Regrettably)

I went to Ikea for the first time and it was an experience to be saved for a post later today. But the bed is out, it doesn't look nearly as neat as it does online. Damn. But I found some other things that are interesting, and I have some good ideas.

Move-in: I have ye old interweb working again (which is good), and the stereo hooked up again (which is better). The books are back in the bookcase but there is no order to it and that makes me a little crazy.

Enough for now. The experiment is bubbling over again. Eck.

"I'm still figuring out what's going to go/In my experimental film..."

2007-05-28T23:30:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, diligent readers might remember, I made a quick post about the month of May and the movies that it held in store and how I was excited about Spiderman 3 and also Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

Well they did not live up to their expectations. In fact, I would say that both of them left me wanting. I don't know that I can put my finger on what it was exactly; but I was certainly left wanting.

I won't get into spoilers for anybody, I don't want to be a harbinger of the doom of a fun time. My review of these two movies is this: they tried to do too much to wrap up the lose story lines and tie all of the ends up so that a fourth movie would be a clean break. The result? Two completely mediocre movies.

The worst part is that I think they would have held up on their own if they had been first or in the middle; but they couldn't be and I am more certain of it than ever--Hollywood is doomed and needs help.

"Your cutting remarks are captured here..."

2007-05-27T14:20:00.000-04:00

I have a new post up on Six Sentences.

In other news the move is finished. But, regrettably, the move-in has just started. Woe is me. I thought I did such a good job of getting rid of stuff that I just didn't need and I found myself looking for a pair of flip-flops, seeing some ridiculous piece of marginalia and saying, "How the fuck did that get brought."

My knees, back, shoulders and soul are killing me. I don't know if I have mentioned this, but I hate moving.

"Meat is Murder..."

2007-05-25T17:47:00.000-04:00

So the title is a little misleading here... I don't know that I really believe that eating meat is inherently bad, or that it makes me a bad person. What I do know is that it makes me... uncomfortably... gastricly. Which is a recent thing. Fish, not so much and oddly enough not bacon either, but beef for sure. It just tears me down socially (that is something that my grandfather says, I don't know I always remember it as a euphamism for feeling bad in the tummy, but I do).

Anyway this week I did a bit of an experiment. I didn't eat meat--which for the purposes of this discussion refers to beef, lamb, goat, game, poultry, fowl, and pork... or more aptly everything that doesn't come out of the ocean. Everything was going great as well, I felt good; lively, alert, maybe even more sensitive (but fear not readers, I was not in the market for a new hair product, not that sensitive, but I did notice that I listened to a lot more Cure over the last week). On Thursday I went over to a friends house and they had a big to-do over dinner, which was pulled pork, and turkey chili, and I just didn't want to be the guy that goes over to somebody's house and says, sort of out of the blue, "Oh. Gosh, thanks for the offer, but I don't eat (or in my case, am trying to cut back on my intake of...) Meat."

So I humbly thanked the hosts and ate the food that was set before me and it was really tasty. I enjoyed it... for about 40 minutes. Then I got wrecked. Absolutely demolished. Heartburn like you wouldn't believe, I will not get into the gorey details of the whole thing, except to say that if you do it in the bathroom and it makes me feel bad or sinister I probably did it.

And so now I will atone--such as it is--for what I have done and go back to my new attempt to cut meat and poultry from the old diet.

Let's see if there is anything else to talk about... hmmm... well I hate moving, to be sure. But the good news is that it is almost over and when it is and I get my new place set up I will post some pictures so that people who don't know me and revel in my apartment... Wait... that sounded dirty.

I think I am on the verge of purchasing my first IKEA product. It is a bed, that has drawers underneath it.
Here is the picture:

Swanky, no?

I have to admit I feel like I am admitting something dire here. I mean isn't IKEA... tragically unhip? But my friend Josh (whose 20 songs is a couple of songs below) is pretty hip and he likes IKEA. What it really gets down to, more than anything else, is that I can't build anything for cheaper and it is exactly what I want. So there it is. I am lame. Ergh.

I found a funny link the other day BOT CON! Near as I can tell it looks like a Transformer collectors convention. I found it while researching information for the Providence Improv Festival. Which is going to be awesome. I can't wait.

Anyway enough said for today. If the weather is nice where you are, go out and get some fresh air, summer is fast upon us.

"Give them a boot to the head..."

2007-05-24T11:56:00.000-04:00

I have been bothered lately in my job by a handful of behaivors.

I work in a theater and I have seen the amount of work that goes in to putting a play with a forty-three show run and I am very appreciative of it.

So lately, two things have been killing me.

The first is easy to describe. People who bolt from the theater before the curtain call. It is rude. Give the actor's their due respect. Sit down for the one minute it takes for an actor to walk out and take a bow. Argh, every time I see it I want to say something really nasty to them. Something nastly that can't be taken back.

The other thing... and this is painful. It is baseball season. I live about forty-five minutes from Boston. People--men mostly, but occasionally a woman-- will come in with a small radio tuner so that they can listen to the everloving fucking baseball game. DURING THE SHOW! That breaks my hearts. They play 162 games a season. Catch the highlights on ESPN, watch the nightly news, call in to 411 & more on your cell phone (which I have done) to get an update. But don't bring a fucking radio tuner to a theater, and then have the temerity to listen to it during the show.

Oh well, I can't control them, I can only hope that I have the opportunity to catch them as it happens and ask them to put it away or leave the theater.

Today, I am taking the day off of moving today, because I am sore in places in forgot I had. Which is exciting and miserable at the exact same time.

"Its the last piece of the puzzle but you just cant make it fit..."

2007-05-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

Well Folks, this is it. Sixty songs from three people that are identified as 20 of their favorite songs.

Now, personally I don't know that these are my twenty favorite of all time. And in fact there are some startling omissions from this list that make me a little embarrassed. For example, Howard Jones; how can you put together a list of twenty favorite songs and not include Ho Jo? But at the same time, I think I could come up with 20 songs of just people who came out in the first decade of the MTV era and have a very very comprehensive list. But, alas, I don't work for a music blog (or even more desirably a music magazine) so this is twenty of my favorite songs as I wrote the list. And as I said already I have grave regrets about it, which is why, in a couple of weeks there will be a gigantor post of my one hundred songs of all time. (Which of course is subject to change at any time).

My List
Song⎯Artist

Brazil⎯Australian Cotton Club Orchestra
One More Night⎯Stars
That's Really Super, Supergirl⎯XTC
The Globe⎯Big Audio Dynamite II
Goody Two Shoes⎯Adam Ant
She's an Angel⎯They Might Be Giants
Take Me I'm Yours⎯Squeeze
Let My Love Open The Door⎯Pete Townshend
Tiny Spark⎯Brendan Benson
Hey Julie⎯Fountains of Wayne
Wake Up⎯Arcade Fire
Love On a Farmboy's Wages⎯XTC
Dirty Old Town⎯The Pogues
My Shit's Fucked Up⎯Warren Zevon
Six Different Ways⎯The Cure
Bigmouth Strikes Again⎯The Smiths
40'⎯Franz Ferdinand
All These Things That I've Done⎯The Killers
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses⎯U2
The Girl From Ipanema⎯Stan Getz & João Gilberto

Josh’s List

Birdhouse In Your Soul—They Might Be Giants
Blister In The Sun—The Violent Femmes
When Will You Come Home⎯Galaxie 500
New Slang—The Shins
Jumping Someone Else’s Train—The Cure
Scythian Empires —Andrew Bird
Where Is My Mind?—The Pixies
A House Is Not A Motel—Yo La Tango
Love Will Tear Us Apart—Joy Division
I Deserve Someone Nice—The No-No’s
Swallowing You—Meg Lee Chin
That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate—Mission Of Burma
Age Of Consent—New Order
Lonesome Graveyard—House Of Freaks
Paranoid Android—Radiohead
Monster Hospital (MSTRKRFT Remix)—Metric
Dark Center Of The Universe—Modest Mouse
Ever Fallen In Love?—The Buzzcocks
Southern Belle—Elliot Smith
Birdman—Ride

Quick editorial note on Josh's list two of the songs are available in about three hundred different versians. So for purposes of listening to them, you should note that Scythian Empires comes from the album Armchair Apocrypha and Dark Center of the Universe comes off of the Night on the Sun EP. The rest of the songs you can assume are album versions of the songs.

Elizabeth's list

La Mer—Charles Trenet
Got A Hold On Me—Mark Kozelek
Dinosaur—Low
Any Way—Journey 18
Girlfriend In A Coma—The Smiths
Baba O’riley—The Who
Digital Love—Daft Punk
Here Come Your Man—Pixies
I’m A Cuckoo—Belle & Sebastian
Heartbeat—Annie
Crimson & Clover—Joan Jett
You’re My Best Friend—Queen
I Believe In A Thing Called Love—The Darkness
Kiss—Prince
Ice Ice Baby—Ben Kweller
Ballad Of Easy Rider—The Byrds
Mushaboom—Feist
Love All Kinds Of
Blue—Evan Dando
No. 1 In C—Bach

Quick editorial note on Elizabeth's list. There were a couple of songs that she didn't list the artist for; one is La Mer, I am about ninety-nine percent certain that the version she has given me is the version by Charles Trenet (and I listed it as such) off of an album called Anthologie de la Chanson Francaise: La selection ideale. There are a lot of crazy French letters and accent marks in there so don't count on the spelling to help you out too much. There is also a song in there that she listed as "Love All Kinds of" and there the descriptions stop. So I don't know. Good Luck.

Well as promised there is the list. The cool thing about it is that I feel like I know them a little better for it.

"He's Going The Distance..."

2007-05-23T10:52:00.000-04:00

So I am still waiting for my friend Elizabeth to fork over her twenty songs so that I can put up all these lists. One of the things that I have started thinking about is putting up a 100 favorite. But this is a monumental task that should not be taken lightly. For example, one of my favorite groups is Cake and I am having trouble finding one or two songs that I like more than any others. It is a really tough task. And I am encountering that problem with a couple of different groups; among them are Howard Jones, Cake, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello. Basically everyone that has had a very prolific career that spans many genres.

I think that once again I have let my alligator eyes eat for my hummingbird ass. Yikes.

"So, when they tap our mundane heads, To zombie-walk in our stead..."

2007-05-22T09:01:00.000-04:00

Yuck. I am up to my ears in dust, memoribilia (that I can't remember the occasion of) and clothes that are either too big for me or too small for me; amongst that category is a shirt, a soccer jersey from when I was seven and a sweater with the Kentucky Wildcats logo on it from when I was three or four and it amazes me that I was ever that small.

It also amazes me that those two items, a bag full of stuffed animals and I think three classes photos are the only things that I have, to this point, kept of my youth. And I am okay with that right now.

While I was moving I made the decision to get rid of my various versions of Monopoly. I have four of them; one is a New York version, one is a Star Wars version, one is a Make-your-own-opoly version (which was a project that I was going to undertake for a friend of my mother's but then he turned out to be a bit of a dickhead so I have held on to it. FOR NINE YEARS!) And a version from London by a compnay called Waddingtons. I am keeping the London version, but only very reluctantly. Monopoly is one of those games that I hate, I mean viscerally hate it. I would rather stare at an eggshell colored wall and listen to Yanni than sit and play a game of Monopoly; and yet I somehow have FOUR versions of this game.

I didn't get them all myself, in fact, I only purchased the London version, which I bought at Harrod's. The others were gifts because various people in my family thought I was collecting them. Which is about the saddest collection I have ever heard of, and it makes me sad to think that somebody, somewhere actually likes monopoly and every night faces a difficult task deciding if he wants to play NASCAR version or Lord of the Rings Version or--why not live on the edge--National Parks version. Blech. I think I just made myself sick.

I am sitting in a chair that I really like because it fosters and urge to sleep and so I have to get out of it soon. But I am looking around my apartment which is in a state of total disarray and I am struck by the fact that I don't really have nearly enough stuff done. But I am trying to keep in mind that the last two times I moved (NY to NM and NM to RI) I had a full week of unemployment to plan for the move and to get things packed and I typically had over a month to start planning that.

This move has been complicated because I wasn't really even sure I was going to be able to move until the tenth. And I had sort of resigned myself to the fact and so I didn't do much to get things working in a positive direction and now I pay for it. I think I made myself sick again.

The other thought that I have had lately is that I am really happy with my taste in music. What I mean by that is that I have music that I can listen to on every occasion and my collection of music, at this point, is probably the most diverse of any person I know. I have a healthy selection of just about every genre music I am aware of (without getting specific and breaking up emo into ten categories). Anyway I made a funny comment to Lovely Wife about my iPod, which was, "The thing I like about my iPod is that there isn't a bad song on it." Which is true. There isn't. And why should there be. Life is too short for crappy music. So you will not see 4 non blondes on my iPod: it is however on my computer because it reminds me of a girl I used to date in high school who used to scream when it came on she hated them so much. Hehehe Good times.

Anyway enough procrastination. I have been on a real glut of writing lately and I am hoping that will continue through the summer as I get settled into my new apartment in Downtow... errr... Down CITY Providence. Keep checking Six Sentences, I will have some stuff coming up there in rapid fire succession.

And now I will get back to work. Today, I will rock out to The Shins probably all day.

"I can't remember what I used to do..."

2007-05-17T09:10:00.000-04:00

I. Hate. Moving.

Really, a lot, I hate it.

The result though is that I am getting rid of a lot of crap that I have been hanging on to... I think.

But that doesn't change the fact that all things being equal I would rather drop a hand grenade into my current space take the insurance money and start anew with a couple pairs of clean underwear, my laptop and six pairs of shirts and shorts.

Totally separate note.

Last night at work a man, an older man, lost his car. He thought it had been stolen: but it hadn't. So we called the police and they showed up and took one look at this guy and said, "So you lost your car, do you know about where you lost it?" The guy sat there and literally scratched his head then his wife jumped in and I lost the plot entirely. She was convinced that she lost the car near "that little restaurant with the parking lot and the valets."

The cop found the gentleman's car. It was parked outside of a strip club called the Sportsman. Which has a couple of bouncers out front and a parking lot attached to it. I nearly lost my shit. The fact that anybody, at all, ever, would confuse this place with a nice little restaurant was the end for me. And I retired to get some dinner.

On my way home, through torrents of rain, I was somehow able to catch a cab, which in Providence is a lot like catching a leprauchan. It was a red gypsy cab called MM Taxi and when I sat down I thought I was going to die. I mean literally not going to come home ever. Moving? Moot. Anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas? Moot. I was going to be dead. The door that Lovely Wife had crawled in shut and my eyes did a slow motion blink--like in the movies where the character blinks and it goes into a weird slow-mo screen cut and his voice becomes blurred (can a voice become blurred?)--as I told the driver my address and he pulled away. But then...

Something strange and wonderful happened. He turned up the stereo and started singing Through the Years by Kenny Rogers and I felt like everything was going to be okay.

And now, alas, I have to go and continue packing. Which is just about my least favorite thing in the whole world.

I have finished my aforementioned 20 Favorite Songs and as soon as I get my CDs from the other parties I will post them all. I have to admit, I am very pleased with mine.

"Take a look, it's in a book..."

2007-05-13T11:01:00.000-04:00

Wow!!! What a week. Time flies for me lately. I was looking at the calendar realizing that I have to move this month, in about... oh... ten days and I haven't packed a thing. Granted I am using this move to unburden myself of most of the crap I have been lugging around for the last 15 years, I am still being far to cavalier about this. I need to knuckle down and get some work done.

But... I had a friends wedding, I have work, I have, I have, I have. And the I have's are sort of slowly outnumbering the I needs and the result is that I am moving in ten days and don't have a lick of work done towards that end. Ugh!

The good news is that I have discovered an author whom I adore. The bad news is that through obstinancy it is someone everybody else has known about for ten years: Neil Gaiman.

I have this feature as a person that if Everybody Else loves something. I immediately balk and find myself saying things like, "He can't be that good," or , "It is probably really base if it appeals to that many people," or, "Why would i want to read something that Everyone Else is reading." And the end result is that I miss out on great stuff and have to own up to my own arrogance too far into the thing. But I have been on many bandwagons and there seems to be plenty of room on this one so I am not too worried about it.

What do I like about Gaiman? Well aside from everything, he has a great way of writing fantasy without invoking the R.A. Salvatore, Piers Anthony crowd. Neverwhere might be one of the best books I have read this year. I picked it up on the recommendation of a friend of mine (I think I was reading a short story of Gaiman's that had been adapted to a Graphic Novel) and I used the airplane as an excuse to start reading. It was one of those things where I thought, ehh, if I hate it I will leave it on the plane and someone else can read it. But the fact was that I loved it and read the whole book in about ten hours (which for Capt. Reads-so-slow here is a feat). First of all he writes about things that I think about already anyway; by that I mean that I have a hyper-active imagination and often times I find myself looking at things--phrases, images, etc.,--that most people take for granted. So reading a novel set in a part of London where Old Bailey is a real person, Mind the Gap is a life saving warning, and the Night on Nights Bridge is very real and very dangerous makes for a very exciting read.

What Neverwhere does the best is to create a great juxtaposition of two worlds where materialism is important for different reasons. In Richard Mayhew's world his life goes haywire when the things that he is accustomed to get turned upside down, his apartment, his job, his bank account all become meaningless when he "falls through the cracks" and meets Door. Door's world is one which is run on mercantilism, if it has an economic system at all, and everything, from white handkerchief's, to a "very big favor" has a value attached and can be used as a currency.

Richard's decent through London Below leads him to many places that he thinks he might have known in London Above, but the pillars of his reality are consistently shaken and it isn't until the books thrilling last chapter does he realized what the important things in his life are.

If you haven't read Neverwhere yet, you really ought to.

I am now tackling Stardust, then I will probably move on to something else entirely--I have some biographies on my shelf that I have to get through--but in the meantime I need to get packing and get ready to move. But first... I have to work.

One last thing, a friend of mine are putting together a CD of our 20 favorite songs, this could be fun, I will post the results when I have finished.

"Ça Plane Pour Moi..."

2007-05-04T21:21:00.000-04:00

People are strange

Nothing accentuates the idiosyncrasies of people better than traveling. I am convinced of this today as I travel from Providence to The Twin Cities for a very good friends wedding.

First, traveling sucks these days and I am not sure if I should send my open letter of disgust to terrorists globally or the US government bureau that runs the TSA. When I was a kid I used to love traveling by plane it was easily one of my five favorite things to do right up there with Wet & Wild Water World, a local water park, skipping school, which I never did but liked the concept of more than anything else and turning all my lights off laying on the floor of my bedroom and listening to Nirvana while I called and talked to some girl that I was convinced I was destined to marry (don’t ask, I was like 15). The point is, as I lose the plot almost entirely, that I loved to travel and was generally bitterly disappointed when I found out that my family was driving anywhere.

But today... I think that if somebody could have made a compelling case for it I would have left the dentist office and sat in a dentist chair for three hours while they performed a root canal with little more anesthetic than a sturdy piece of oak branch and a greasy rag.

Here are a couple of reasons why: First, the TSA is a joke; Second, airlines have become less friendly than I thought was possible, and the attitude that I constantly got from them gave the impressions that they were doing me a favor by taking my hard earned and carting me around the country; Third, people on airplanes that fly are by-and-large the most despicable variety of their particular flavor of people around.

The TSA is a joke deserves a bit of a qualifier. I would speculate that flying around is safer than it was prior to the Sept. 12 Government Expansion Projects, but I don’t think that it says much. The guy that scanned my bags through the big x-ray scanning machine that sits near the check-in might—and this is a very big might—have looked at four bags. He certainly noticed the ass of the woman that was loading all of the big bags onto the conveyor belt but I would surmise that he spent very little time of his workday looking at the silver outlines of underwear, shirt, razors and vibrators. (Which makes me wonder, how often does a woman put her vibrator through the checked baggage, and is it possible for me to meet her. That takes a tremendous amount of courage and I honestly get terrified that the scanner—who doesn’t scan anything apparently—is going to form some opinion about the fact that half of my packed underwear have stripes.) The security check through guy did take at least a second glance at my drivers license when I walked through, it is 4 years old and the guy in the photo and the guy typing this up don’t look to much alike anymore and that is a good thing. But they have this new, well, new to me, policy of making sure that all of your lotions, creams and what not are packaged together in a clear zip lock baggie in your carry-on luggage. Saline solution doesn’t count though, because it is medical. Which baffles me because getting the top of a bottle of saline solution isn’t difficult and I will routinely refill my small saline bottle so that I am not lugging around my gigantic economy size bottle. So why couldn’t I put anything else in there; just and idle question?

The airlines, oh gods where do I start? I generally fly the minor carriers Southwest (if Southwest still qualifies as a minor carrier), and Jet Blue (I have been known to drive 6 hours so that I can fly Jet Blue) are the two big ones that come to mind. But today I am flying United and American and I think it might be the last time for both. United has started this thing called Economy Plus for which they charge a little extra and it includes the seats from the bulk head through the emergency row—about half the aircraft. When I went to check in at the counter I asked for a window seat and the guy started typing away then informed me that the only window seat available was going to be extra. They must have a policy in place that says don’t charge anybody who uses words of frustration but doesn’t swear or get angry, because I think I said that it was an idiotic policy to sell me a seat and not charge me for it at the point of purchase, and voila, I am sitting in an emergency aisle; but not without a great deal of attitude. I didn’t even get a, “Have a nice flight/day/morning/life/anything.” The woman at American was nice enough when I checked in to my gate at O’Hare airport but when I asked her if there was by chance a place to get a haircut in the airport—a strange request I thought but in Chicago it seemed possible; and I wasn’t disappointed, the barber/salon/whatever was in a whole other terminal of the airport—she gave me my answer then proceeded to lecture me on the value of pedestrian exercise, at which point I told her I don’t own a car, walk everywhere I ever have to go and I would indulge my desire to sit on my butt for the forty minutes that it would take them to start boarding. She just shrugged and looked me up and down—I am overweight, I admit it, but she didn’t have to acknowledge it.

My least favorite part of flying though is the people around whom I end up spending time. Maybe it is my dumb luck, but as I get older I meet a lot less of the kinds of people that I met when I was 12 and a child flying. But I suppose if I sat down and really thought about it that would hold true everywhere in my life, not just the airport. So when I get on the plane in Providence I end up sitting in a row with the three biggest guys on the plane. And two of them stake out their claim on the arm rests right away, so I ended up sitting for two hours with my arms crossed, shoulders cramped and otherwise great temperament sinking like the faster Dubya’s approval rating. At one point during the flight though the guy on my left made a fatal mistake and leaned forward so I gallantly claimed a portion of the armrest and tried to un-cramp my shoulders slightly.

You know which gets me thinking: when I am in an airplane I am maybe overly considerate. For example when I sit down I take special care to see you is behind me so that if I wanted to, say, put my seat back a little bit I am not going to break a kneecap doing it. The woman who sat in front of didn’t share with me in that habit of courtesy and when she threw her chair back it popped my kneecaps out of place and I haven’t been walking right all day.

The other funny thing about the airports is that time doesn’t exist beyond the walkthrough metal detector at the entrance to the terminals.

I flew out at 7:00 a.m. and I saw a guy sitting at the bar in the airport drinking, what looked like, a pilsner with a cheeseburger. SEVEN IN THE MORNING and homeboy is washing down a cheeseburger with a cold beer. When I got to Chicago at 8:30 local time there were a bunch of people sitting at a Chili’s eating Fajitas and drinking Coronas and Dos Equis. (What is the plural of Dos Equis?) And it honestly freaks me out to see people who have been awake for hours and hours eating what I consider to be lunch at 8:00 a.m. it is just surreal the way that you completely lose sense of things, the terminals are so well lit up and the haze from the pollution diffuses all the light and you just lose time.

But these last two things are the best. First, I stood in the waiting area of the boarding gate and actually said to myself, “Damn, all the seats are full.” But they weren’t they were half full but there were no seats that would give me the opportunity to sit so that I wasn’t next to anybody—so it was like looking at a chessboard where every other square had a body in it—then I went and on the floor of the holding pen. ON THE FLOOR, BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO SIT NEXT TO SOMEONE! I hope that everyone sees how ludicrous that is. I did. Second I sat next to really nice man on my way from Chicago to Minneapolis he told me about his job—he is the real Tom Hanks from Fed Ex: his job is to make sure your packages get where they are supposed to go, not he was stranded on an island for five years—and the particulars about it, he told me about his house on the lake in Minnesota, how he doesn’t like his cell phone because sometimes he gets off a plane and picks up his baggage with just enough time to turn around and get on another plane somewhere, and how he only got his first PC in the last 8 years and he is totally lost without it now that it is broken. But I never once thought of asking his name.

I love flying.

Now that I am landed and settled in my hotel room, I have to say it is all worth it. My friends family are really great, they are close-knit and I kind of grew up with all of them so it is really nice to see them all. Tomorrow is the wedding, I can’t wait.

"The Good Times Are Killing Me..."

2007-05-03T00:39:00.000-04:00

This is going to be quick and dirty.

Nothing, nothing in the world is more fun than a good Rock & Roll show with good friends.

Tonight, I saw Modest Mouse, who is playing with Johnny Marr, and the show fucking rocked. I mean they kill on stage, they know how to get the crowd into it and they picked their opening bands well.

The opening band tonight was a band out of Philly called Man Man. Awesome in concert. Imagine... Tom Waits and a psycho carnival music. I think one of the guys played a fire extinguisher. But the killed. I mean they had the place packed.

For all of you old time Smiths and The The fans. Johnny Marr holds up. He slid right into the band and it is really hard to believe that he is 45. Man... Great show.

"...to Boston..."

2007-05-01T09:11:00.000-04:00

So... Last night was another fruitful trip on the train up to Boston.

The ride was uneventful except for the fact that next to me, was a woman and a boy that I assume was her son. The boy was plugged into a laptop watchng School of Rock and the mother-figure was working on a project for school it seemed. Just as the train started to pull away from the station I heard one of those tell-tale sighs that just perfectly highlights the persons thoughts.

Then she started shaking her head back and forth and laughing to herself as she worked on her project.

Up in Boston we met with a friend of my wife's whom she knew from a children's theater group. It was a really nice evening, I had met the girl a couple of times before and she is one of those really vivacious people that laughs with her whole body and has a great story for just about any situation.

The place we went to... not as awesome. It was pub grub so the menu is what you would expect, sandwiches, some over cooked pasta dishes but it was cheap and that was the most important thing.

While we were there, however, I became aware of something. The United States is lying to us. And not in the way you are thinking, not the starting wars, misusing taxes, or any of that marginalia. This is big. I am convinced, that the world is much, much farther along with cloning technology than we had been led to believe.

As support I provide you three restaurants in Boston and Providence that employee three waitresses that could be triplets. They are all medium height: let's call it 5'5". With dark brown curly hair and hips and just that kind of all-American girl look. If you need help, check out Doc Hollywood's Julie Warner. Anyway, so this clone, and last night we called her G57, I swear she looks like about ten other waitresses, counter help people that I know from around town. And that sort of got me thinking, you know how people say, "Oh you look just like so-and-so," or, "You look so much like my friend Squibbledy Bob." What if that is because you are that person, or rather because the Cloning Company has your DNA and they are just pushing out carbon copies of you willy-nilly. Wouldn't that be freaky? Luckily for me, there isn't much demand for tall, doughy in the midsection, sarcastic, dickheads. So I am pretty safe, but it sucks for the person that G57 was based on.

On the train ride home I overheard a soul aching conversation. It went something like this:

The scene takes place on a commuter train, it is mostly empty, there are two couples sitting across the aisle from one another, one is doing a cross word puzzle in a local tabloid newspaper, the other is sitting across from each other. They are not a couple in the sense that they are in a romantic relationship, they are co-workers or business associates. There is also a girl sitting two seats away prattling on a cell phone inaudibly.
Girl: ... I really got into Shakespeare when I took an American Literature class.
Boy: Oh. Yeah. I go to the Shakespeare in the park, like every year.
Girl: This year they are doing Titus Androgynous.

At this point I have to stop, because I am not embellishing and I really want to embellish but that would make these two seem more ridiculous then they were already. But seriously, folks, and I can't stress this enough, if you don't know something make sure you say it really loud, that way you aren't compounding ignorance and inaudibility (Strunk & White, Elements of Style. pg xviii). Not to mention there will be someone around you whose day you will make.

The ride home was as awesome as ever, because the cabbie, I am convinced, had a twelve pack of empty Hamm's cans in the back. If you are ever in Providence for any reason I strongly endorse Big Daddy's Taxi over any other taxi company. The logo is cheesey but it is a very well run cab company. Stay away from any cab company featuring a person's name; Gonsalez, Richard's, etc,.

On a personal note, I am in the middle of having my ass handed to me by allergies.

2007-04-25T09:48:00.000-04:00

Who's that on Six Sentences? Why it is me, silly, of course.

If you guys don't check out six sentences very often you are missing out. This is, in my opinion, some of the finest wicked short work out there. Pay particular attention to Madame Z. and Kimi Goodrich.

Thanks, as always, to Rob.

"Get up, come on get down with the sickness"

2007-04-22T10:42:00.000-04:00

I don't know about anybody else, but I know I am going to be sick about 16 hours before I get sick. My throat gets dry, I get irritable, and I lose my appetite.

That happened last night while I was in the middle of a double shift, which consequently lead into a double shift today. I hate being sick at work, mostly because I have this overburdened sense of responsibility that prevents me from taking time off when I need to. Anyway, I lament.

My friend Amy (who I am going to get see fingers crossed in a couple of weeks) does this playlist thing. Here is my installment for today, since I am too lazy to do anything else today.

If only it were socially acceptable to make a mix tape #2

The Sick Bed Of Cuchuliann -- The Pogues -- Rum, Sodomy and The Lash
Sick of Myself -- Matthew Sweet -- 100% Fun
Sick Day -- Fountains of Wayne -- Fountains of Wayne
Ill Troubadour -- David Garza -- [hear it at www.myspace.com/davidgarza]
Black Coffee in Bed -- Squeeze -- Singles 45s and Under
Medicine Hat -- Flin Flon -- A-Ok
The End of Medicene -- The New Pornographers -- Electric Version
Things Can Only Get Better -- Howard Jones -- Howard Jones: Best of
Nothing Better -- Postal Service -- Give Up
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate -- The Flaming Lips -- Soft Bulletin
Comfortably Numb -- The Scissor Sisters -- A Touch of Class S***s!

That mix tape goes to eleven. Here's to feeling better.

"I put on a fake smile and start the evening show"

2007-04-19T16:32:00.000-04:00

So I mentioned earlier that my grandfather thinks that there hasn't been good movie made since 1979. Which is the year that Marion Morrison (a.k.a. John Wayne) passed away. For a long time I have felt like I should put up a fight and for the most part I did. I subjected the poor old man to Adventures in Babysitting, Breakfast Club and Big Trouble in Little China all for naught.

I think in hindsight if I had picked my selections a little more cafefully I might have won him over. But then again we are talking about a man who has a visceral hatred for Dances With Wolves (and not because it unleashed Kevin Costner onto an unsuspecting and unprepared world, although that is also a correct answer) because he thinks it is unrealistic. Specifically the movie was ruined for him when a commander shoots himself at the beginning of the movie. He thinks it is disrespectful and maybe I agree with him. But he hated it and walked out of the theater and sat on a bench in the mall for four hours when my mother--who loved that movie--took him to see it.

The point of all of this is that I am starting to feel like my grandfather and I blame the marketing machine in Hollywood. There are essentially two film seasons now. Summer Blockbuster Season, which lasts from the beginning of May until Labor Day, and Oscar Season, which seems to start in October and run through the end of the year. There isn't really even a Holiday season you can count on anymore because the Oscar stuff has become such a boon for the studios and their is really only so much that a major studio can put out every year that Holiday Season usually runs smack into the Oscar heavy hitters... but I digress.

The point is that the state of movies right now in Providence is abyssmal and I feel like I am waiting with bated breath until either Spiderman 3 comes out or Pirates of the Caribbean 3 comes out. And not because I so love craptastic fluff action movies; but because they will seem downright epic compared to the nonsense that is out right now.

Oh well, seems like a really long way to say that the movies that are out suck, but there it is.

"Let us talk about some trivial things we like..."

2007-04-19T09:23:00.000-04:00

So a couple of things, to conquer first:

I love the fact that there is a scheme to my lovely wife’s blog. Every single post has a title that is taken from a line of one of Shakespeare’s plays. So I am going to shamelessly rip that idea off of her and adopt something similar.
My very dear friend, Amy Guth has been nominated for a blogger’s choice award and it is pretty important that she win. Not because I have an overriding loyalty to her but because I want to be able to say that I knew where when she was just a pastry chef trying to get a break. So if you are a friend of her’s already make sure that you vote for her, if you haven’t checked out her site or read her book, you are painfully behind the times, get with it, join the twenty-first century. Sheesh.
It looks like I might be moving soon. Before you start applauding too loudly, I hate moving; with the intensity of a thousand white-hot suns. Moving to me is like Britney Spears first album to my mom. Or like… Any movie that doesn’t star Gregory Peck or John Wayne to my grandfather (more on that later).

So I went to Boston last night, which was fun; the old lady and I took a train up to go and just get out of town for the night. It was great.

We started off with the intention of doing something we hadn’t done before, so we went to an Ethiopian food place called Addis Red Sea. Very interesting dining experience considering I have never had Ethiopian food before; they didn’t give us utensils, you get bread and food and you can shovel or manipulate the food into your mouth. It was strange trying to relearn how to do something like eat.

Don’t get me wrong, I eat with my fingers all the time, but not typically spicy dishes that involve a sauce. It is usually more like fried shrimp or calamari. The food itself was good, I would go back but I am going to check out another Ethiopian food place before I rush back to that one.

While we there though we were sitting next to this couple (two men if you have to know) and we both left the place thanking the G-ds that we weren’t single anymore, it has been almost nine and a half years since I was single. Listening to these guys talk was really strange because it seemed like it was a blind date. One of them, we will call this one Reggie (he was sitting on my right), had just gotten out of a relationship that sounded like it was pretty serious, and he talked about it almost all night long: my previous relationship this, my previous relationship that, my ex-boyfriend this, my ex-boyfriend that, it was really off putting and I wasn’t even dining with him. The other guy, we will call Lemy (because he was on my left), just sat there and I wasn’t even completely convinced that he wasn’t a mute. But in his defense Reggie dominated the conversation. The only time I actually heard him speak was when he sheepishly uttered the words, “I am not really a programmer.” A response to the only break in Reggie’s diatribe about his ex, which was, “You are pretty outgoing for a computer programmer.” Here is a quick list of the things I learned about their lives: (Guess who learned the HTML tag for lists?)

Reggie

Just, like in the last 6 weeks, got out of a relationship.
Likes to work out and play volleyball.
Is in grad school.
Picked this grad school on the strength of its gay population.
Really likes his Ex and is really lonely and pining for him

Lemy

Is pretty outgoing for a computer programmer.
Isn’t really a programmer.

After dinner we walked around the Tremont Street area, and I will come right out and say it, I love the feel of Boston. It seems like the kind of city where a person can really live. I have friends who will disagree with me, and their points are well taken, but the area between Back Bay Station and Tremont St. is pretty much everyplace I want to live. The major drawback is that the real estate is insane there. And I don’t mean a little crazy like a girlfriend who wears your underwear like a hat and growls seductively. I mean the kind of girlfriend who at 34 still grooms the hair of her My Little Pony collection—which she still actively collects. At one point we stopped at a real estate office that had listings in the window and some crazy fucker was asking over half a million dollars for a two room apartment. And as much as I think Boston is an adorable city, it isn’t that cute.

We had some time to kill and so we went to Newbury St. up around Trinity Church and Copley Square and we found a great little candy shop called Sugar Heaven. I don’t think that I would have seen it except that they had music playing and it broke the stillness of the street (Newbury St. businesses seem to shut down at 6:30 or something, which for a giant retail strip seems a little early). Nice selection of candy and some really great imports. So naturally I got a really nice sugar high. Naturally.

But before that we passed the Massachussets Institute of Rock and I think I know what my calling is; I am going to become a licensed awesomologist. Surely the MIR can help me on my way to that, with their MA in Awesomology program.

(I think at this point we should break for a test of our emergency sarcasm alert system, this is only a test)

I think the institution of the Hard Rock Café bothers me more than the restaurant itself. I read a funny interview with Andy Partridge, from XTC, and he was telling the story of how HRC asked him for a guitar and he told them to bugger off. If you are like me and don’t have a reason to hate them then go to the website and do a search for cafes and look at the number of places that they have locations that they probably shouldn’t (they have one in Beirut, one in the Northern Mariana Islands and one in Oslo, Norway. Nothing says embrace Capitalism quite like Barracuda blaring over the restaurant speakers while you eat your “Joe Perry’s ‘Rock Your World’ Quesadilla” in Kuala Lumpur. I think I just threw up in my mouth… a lot.

But the whole night ended on a really positive note for me. Actually the cabbie that drove me home was kind of crazy, but I will get to that in a second. When I got back on the train to Providence, there were two little girls that had just been to a Build-a-Bear Workshop and had their new friends in tow. And it was adorable and it made me really appreciate what it was like to be ten and innocent and be able to hug a stuffed animal and not feel like you are on the verge of getting your ass kicked. When I was ten I was a rampant GI Joe collector, I had a first series Snake Eyes (you could tell he was first series because he didn’t have the swivel-arm action, but did still have the kung-fu grip), and I had just bought my first Dungeons & Dragons books. I would play D&D out at the school yard with Chad and Brian and I didn’t really care that Candy and Marsha thought I was stupid (although it was a little hurtful when Jennifer, Allison and Dana gave me dog food and a collar for a Christmas present). And I wish I could have hugged these two little girls and squeezed them tight and told them to hold on to this age forever and never forget that for ten days you loved your new bear, Clover, more than anything else in the world without being arrested and thrown in jail. But such is life.

Then the cabbie drove me home, at sixty miles an hour, down my residential street. At one point I think he screeched to a stop, sideways, in front of a cop. I wanted him to get a ticket so bad.

So today, I am going to head into work, and tackle my project with a renewed vigor that there was a time when I didn’t take everything so seriously.

Vote for Amy.

Tonight we dine in hell...

2007-04-16T09:52:00.000-04:00

Or rather this morning we breakfast on Chocolate.

Seriously

I am sitting here, at my coffee table, writing and eating a chocolate bar. It isn't a Hershey bar though, it is a Scharffenberger bittersweet (70% Cacao) bar. So it is great quality chocolate. But it is still chocolate and I can't help but think that as I approach my 31st birthday I should be taking better care of myself.

Eavesdropping

2007-04-09T15:53:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, especially lately, I like to sit in a public place, like a coffee shop or a bus depot, with my headphones on listening to music and make up the conversations of the people around me.

I am fairly certain that this is not a new thing for people to do. But I go through phases where I really enjoy it and then the flip side are the times when I would rather eaves drop and see what happens in other peoples lives.

Today I am listening to XTC, one of their earlier albums and I am watching couple of women outside. Check out Marlowes Sketchpad for the description.

I get tired of saying things like, “I am going to be better about posting,” because I say it and just don’t follow through, which is just lame. So I am going to stop feeling obligated to do it and hopefully that will help with solve the output problem.

Thanks for your patience.

DOOMED!!!

2007-04-07T20:45:00.000-04:00

I am convinced tonight that America is doomed in the "healthy" department.

I blame Nintendo, Sega and the cola industry primarily.

Tonight at work... wait I am going to stop and set up some back story.

I work in a theater, not a movie theater but a play house, or repertory theater if you prefer. Anyway, we have two venues here and one of them, the larger, "Main Stage" (but not in an "Amber will be on the mainstage" kind of way), is upstairs. It is technically on the third floor of the building. There is a stair way, and a small elevator, that will get you there. Now this not a drastic three floors. It is a grand floor, maybe 25 feet, between the first and second floor; and then 12 feet, or so, between the 2nd and 3rd, and then maybe another 25 feet between the Mezzanine level and what we call the balcony level--although it isn't a balcony in the truer sense of the word. And we have people, employees and patrons alike, bitch about the stairs all day long.

So tonight, this lady (who was... obese) and her obese little son were trudging up the stairs. I say trudging because that is what it looked like. It was sad really. The conversation that I heard went something like this:

Her: Wow. All these stairs. (gasping for air) This is a pretty good workout. I could have gotten a regular coke tonight.
Him: Yeah it isn't that bad, I have been playing Dance Revolution, so I am in pretty good shape.

(This is a total side bar note, but I wish that along with the blockquote and italics commands HTML tags included an "End Faith in Humanity")

Now, what those two people needed was a comprehensive dietary and exercise regime overhaul. If their idea of taking care of themselves is to drink a diet soda and play a video game... well as a race (or nation) we are doomed.

Movies, magic and mayhem...

2007-03-31T16:14:00.000-04:00

I went to the movies this week. Tuesday afternoon to be precise, I have a litany of excused why it has taken me so long to get this up and I will save you all of them.

Here are some thoughts I have about what I witnessed or was party to:

First things first, the woman who sold me my matinee ticket (I am a responsible movie watcher and will almost refuse to see a full price movie these days. I just can't stomach the $9.50 charge) seemed to think that the movie I was going to see, 300, was a history. It is not. It is a comic book movie. The event that the comic book is based on is largely accepted to be a factual event but the history on the actual battle of Thermopylae is something that, as near as I can tell, is a pretty contested event. How many people Leonidas actually brought, how many Persians were there and how many other people showed up--Arcadians, Thebans, etc.,--is up to debate. But that wasn't the best part. The best part was that the ticket girls said that she wishes the Spartan boys were alive today because (and this is a quote), "...they would show these little gang-banger-wannabe punks what being tough is all about." Wow. We are doomed.

--

Second. I past a poster that filled me equal parts dread and excitement: Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. This is the part of my blog where I expose something that I am often ashamed of: I like comic books. When I was a kid (umm... high school) I was a fanatical comic book reader. But I didn't typically tend towards the mainstream stuff. I really liked the Marvel macabre books; things like Morbius, Ghost Rider, Sons of Midnight, Blade. I also really liked the more esoteric comics in DC's Vertigo line. At any rate, I am really nervous about the movie because I have always felt that Silver Surfer was a great character and one to which I could relate. But Hollywood has a way of completely destroying comic book movies. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comes to mind right away. As does every movie that bears a Marvel character except for Spiderman and X-men. DC for some reason has been fairly immune to the problems of their universe of characters being wrecked by Hollywood. I guess executives are more respectful of Superman and Batman then they are of Punisher, Capt. America and Hulk. I think I might be able to dedicate and entire post to this topic in the future so I will spare everyone the diatribe... for now.

--

There is an advertisement that is out for Pepsi, I think, that features a guy cracking open a can of soda and being taken for a pinball ride through a city. As all of this happens there is a song playing by a band called Plastic Bertrand called Ca Plane Por Moi. A great song, really fast, really loud, really... French. Anyway, about every 10 years there seems to be a shift in the music that we hear in advertisements and I imagine (this isn't much of a leap) that it is either to target a specific audience or because the people in the firms that make the decisions on what songs go into which ads is getting more into more age group and as such I am finding a lot more ads that have music with which I have a personal connection.

--

Spiderman 3, which looks like it is going to kick ass, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3, also ass-kicking good time, both come out in May, which means I am going to be broke as a joke and I have two months to plan for it. Seriously, as we get closer to the release dates for these shows, I will have whole posts dedicated to them.

--

There is an ad at the beginning of the movies that shows a bunch of people opening presents and being disappointed. Which is stupid. If you are disappointed by a gift you are a dickhead. I have gotten plenty of gifts where my first reaction is WTF but I think I have been pretty good at distinguishing the dickheadish behavior early and squashed it. But I am digressing, the point of the ad is that, Everybody like movies and if you don't know what you should get somebody you should just get them passes to our movie theater. And having said that if you are disappointed by a gift you are a dickhead, I am going to revise that. If you are disappointed by a gift that is not a gift certificate you are a dickhead. Gift certificates are the worst kind of gift and I would almost prefer to have a well-written card than some shitty gift card to a store.

My mother is the only person who makes gift cards work out well, what she does is goes out and buys you something from a store (I am going to use a bookstore as an example). So she buys a book that she wants someone to read, then she gets a gift certificate to go along with it; figuring I am going to spend $50 on your present, I know you should read this book, if you haven't already, and then here is $50 to get some stuff that you will want to read later. So you know she is thinking about it, you know that she has had that inner turmoil that mothers and brothers and sisters get when they shopping for family and used the gift card to supplement the gift she is getting. Kudos to you, mom.

--

I am always a sucker for a movie that has to do with the apocalypse (biblically speaking) and there is a movie with Hillary Swank coming out called The Reaping. One of the costars is Stephen.. err either Fry or Rea... Not Oscar Wilde the other one, from Crying Game.

And that conversation right there has been beating me up for a long time, how in the heck am I, a stupid American, expected to keep Stephen Fry and Stephen Rea separate in my head?

Here is what I came up with. I don't know that it will help necessarily anybody but me but if you know me you will see how my mind works. Stephen Rea is Irish. He is a republican. So Stephen Resents English Authority. See, I made an anagram of his name. That is really crafty of me. I am quite pleased.

Hoofin it through the snow.

2007-03-25T11:34:00.000-04:00

Last night was weird. First of all, it was the most gorgeous day of the year in Providence. By that I mean; it was the prom queen of days, and not the prom queen that wins because she is the prettiest but then has the blackest soul and kicks puppies and thinks kittens are obnoxious: it was the prom queen that was really nice to everyone, who volunteered at the local Boys & Girls Club, kicked ass on the debate team, but was still a total knock out. You get the idea.

And I was stuck inside. Working. You know what is awesome about work? Not a damn thing. Which is why, when the sun went down and the rain started to fall and it turned to snow and I got to hoof it the mile and a half (Literally uphill) home, I had a little time to think about things.

So the snow is falling and the girls from the business/trade school here in town (the freshman) were running around dressed like fools. Just absolute fools. It was ridiculous, absolutely no clothing at all, all halter-tops and bustiers.

--

Lately I have read a lot about the state of the American education system and I was thinking about how sad it is that apparently 20% of the US population is functionally illiterate. That is one in five. So if you compound that with another statistic I saw recently: if you are in a bar trying to pick people up you have one in five chance of picking up a person who is either illiterate or has an STD. To quote the old knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, "You must choose, but choose wisely."

--

So the point of this entry today, is to do a mailbag. I get a lot of mail from my readers (lie) and they ask all kinds of crazy questions (LIE) so here is today's crazy reader mailbag (if I actually had one).

1. John D. -- Anywhere, US writes: Hey, V., how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Great one, John, and you came to the right place. A woodchuck is capable of chuck 9 cubic feet of wood per hour. so if you refine the question (or do some simple math on your own) we can come up with a better answer.

2. Jane D. -- Anyville, US writes: I don't understand March Madness. My boyfriend won't spend anytime with this month, can you explain it?
Yes, March Madness is basically the last hurrah for some of these kids, and it is, outside of the World Cup, the best sporting event on the planet. Having said all that, your boyfriend shouldn't ignore you and since I am not a basketball fan per se I would invite you to come to my house and hang out we can watch whatever you want.

3. Nicole -- Providence, RI writes: What are you thinking?
Sweetie, not much, but you should be used to it by now

4. C. Ronaldo -- Manchester, UK writes: Why is soccer a better sport than football?
Chris, thanks for writing in, here is the answer for all of the math majors. Statistically speaking soccer and football (American football that is) have exactly the same total goals scored in a game. The principal difference is that in AF they call each goal 6 points. But some fancy math will quickly show you that the average football game and the average soccer game end with a total of 5 goals per game (this stat is completely made up). Also in AF the "athletes" exert themselves for a total of 12 minutes in a 60 minute game. Surprised? Have you seen Ted Washington? Whereas in Soccer they exert themselves for a 45 minutes of a 90 minute game. Astounding isn't it?

5. V. -- Providence, RI writes: V. are you happy having completely fabricating a mailbag? Do you feel better now? Is this what you wanted?
Yes, Yes, Yes

Thanks folks this filled the 30 minutes that I needed to fill so that I could spend another gorgeous day inside. WOOT!

Two new revelations.

2007-03-16T08:50:00.000-04:00

I don't have a car, I believe that I have mentioned that in the past. It is a fact, I have no automobile. I live in a very walkable city and I have found that the public transportation, while not perfect, is generally pretty good and gets me where I really want/need to be.

I also have a friend, who is in Japan right now, who lent me his car while he was away on the provision that I drive him to and from the airport. (I think I actually offered to take him up and then pick him up and he offered me his car.) Long story short, my wife went down to visit her parents and I went to go and hang out with a friend of mine and work on finishing up a bit of a project we are working on. Anyway, on the way, we ran over a stake that was apparently intended for some sort of asphalt vampire. I am going to lie to everybody and say that it was at least 14 feet long. But the reality is that it was just big, it wasn't a nail, it was more like a rivet from the construction site that is also called I-195. So the tire goes flat and I came to the realization that I really don't miss changing tires. Not one bit. I knew that I wasn't crazy about it before, but I really discovered tonight that I can't stand that shit.

What I also realized is that I really dislike changing tires in the middle of a gawl darn sleet storm: with ice pellets being whipped at you by the wind and with idiot plow drivers shooting snow and filthy slush at you. That is easily the one thing in the day that I could have done without. Yep... didn't really need that today.

Lunch Date?

2007-03-15T15:29:00.000-04:00

umm... so I have this new office--it is an extended cubicle more than anything else. Not very exciting to be sure, but it does have highlights; among them are the fact that I am right next to the soda machine, I am about 25 feet from the men's room and I have a gigantic set of window right behind my desk. Which is what I am writing about.

The window overlooks a gentlemen's cabaret--or stripclub if you prefer--and watching the guys come in and out of this place during their lunch breaks is priceless. I mean just priceless. The kind of thing that you have to wonder about because these guys are going to lunch, coming back from lunch covered in stripper dust and cheap perfume and telling their friends and co-workers what? I just went to subway bought my BMT and then this band of strippers tackled me on my way back and rolled around all over me.

Unbelievable, the best though was watching the guy go in, come out and take a phone call, go back in, come out again and take another phone call (same person?) and then go back into the club. Bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase "power lunch"

Yuck.

I got no strings...

2007-03-06T10:37:00.000-05:00

Well, not that anybody really cares, but I have joined a wireless community. I have purchased a new computer and as I sit and write this post, I am sitting in a tea bar in Providence. A tea bar. Weird feeling to be honest. But good.

Hopefully that means that I will be more likely to be posting more often, but who knows I seem to make a lot of empty promises about being more prolific with my posts. Empty promises.

My new favorite playwright... today.

2007-02-19T00:19:00.000-05:00

Friedrich Dürrenmatt. He wrote two excellent plays which I have read and seen in The Physicists and The Visit(respectively). I highly recommend him to anybody that likes to read drama, and anybody who likes to think while they read.

I have been reading Somersault by Kenzaburo Oe lately and I am taken aback by how intense, mentally, this book seems to be to me. Every page is so filled with imagery and emotion and story that it feels like it has taken me 6 weeks to make a dent in it. Oh wait it has. Well I am now well over half way finished and I have hit a bit of a lull in the book and am having trouble with the chapter, but if I endure it will get better.

Last things last, I have a new post up on the sketchpad take a look and leave comments.

Thanks.