| Goodbye, David Foster Wallace |
[Sep. 15th, 2008|05:46 pm] |
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Because I have a lot of homework, I can’t write much, although I want to. David Foster Wallace committed suicide on September 12, 2008. I am deeply saddened by this event. I would not call Wallace a hero of mine. To be my hero, a person must embody some sort of ideal that I hope to one day achieve. To me, there was nothing ideal about David Foster Wallace. Often I found his ideas sad and upsetting. However, I enjoyed much his work somehow more fully than the work of any of my heroes. I felt a real connection to his writing; the kind of connection that made me forget I was reading and start to feel like his ideas were my ideas. He amused me in a way that otherwise only very close friends have been able to amuse me. And though I only spoke with him once, and never really “met” him (I asked him a question once from the audience when he gave a talk in LA), I will miss him as though I knew him. |
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| Reasonable Person Standards |
[Sep. 23rd, 2007|08:01 am] |
So what is going on with me? I'm still learning the law. Lots of studying every day (although I did take time out to watch UGA defeat Alabama yesterday; Go Dawgs!).
But what am I learning, you say? A little bit of procedural stuff. A good amount of law. And a whole lot of theory behind why laws are the way they are. For instance, do you know anything about the "reasonable person" standard for torts of negligence? The idea behind this standard is that when a jury is instructed to decided whether a defendant acted negligently, the jury must compare the defendant's behavior against what the jury thinks a person of reasonable prudence (sometimes phrased as "with reasonable care") would do in the same situation (given all the same circumstances). This sounds kind of straightforward, but it has some caveats. One is that if the person (i.e. the defendant) has some special knowledge or skill that should have aided them in being less negligent, then that special skill should be taken into account, because it is part of the circumstances of the situation. However, if the defendant is less than of normal intelligence, the lack of knowledge and skill should not be taken into account, and instead the person should be held to the "reasonable person" standard (I should point out that this is the law in the majority of states, but not all of them; that is another fun part of law school, in that you really just learn what most states do, and occasionally the minority state laws are discussed merely to compare against what the more prevalent standard is).
But wait, there is more to this "reasonable person" standard than just that. If a person is physically disabled (blind, paralyzed, broken arm), they are only expected to meet the standard of a reasonable person "with that disability". Again, it is reasoned that the physical disability is part of the circumstances of the situation. However, if a person is mentally disabled, they are expected to meet the standards of a "reasonable person" who is not mentally disabled. This is the really big one. When I read about this, I wasn't sure how to react. The justifications for this are interesting. Some of them are: A) when two innocent people are involved in an injury, the actor who was the cause of the injury should bear the loss; B) holding mentally disabled people accountable for a reasonable standard of care will discourage people from feigning mental disability to get out of liability for negligent behavior; C) (this is the toughest one to swallow) this level of accountability forces persons with disabilities to pay for the damages they do if they "are to live in the world."
One of the things we talked about on the first day of class in torts is that the commonly held belief that America is an extremely litigious place is somewhat of a misconception, and a huge percentage of tortious acts go completely unlitigated because either the injured parties don't know they have been negligently harmed, or else they don't think they will be able to win (or win enough to justify the costs of a lawsuit). Yet learning about the way the law is structured, it makes me wonder how anyone could expect to know when they have a justifiable lawsuit. Did you know about the standards of reasonable care expected of physically and mentally disabled people?
I wonder if they have a database online that would help you to find these things out. Like those databases for medicine where you type in your symptoms and it brings up a list of diseases you may be suffering from. Only in the legal database, you would type in your injuries and the elements of the act, and it would bring up a determination of whether you have a claim worth bringing to a lawyer for further investigation. |
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| Very Very Bad Haikus |
[Sep. 7th, 2007|06:56 pm] |
Very very bad
Haikus haikus haikus hai
Kus haikus haikus
One two three four five
Six seven eight nine ten el
Even twelve thirteen
I have to poop now
We are out of toilet paper
We use paper towels
Redundancy is
Re-FUN-dancy as far as
I am concerned here
Lazy joke writing
Is not an excuse for bad
Premises for jokes
"High Q" was a tri
Via show not japanese
Syllabic poems poems
The thirteenth floor is
Called the fourteenth floor because
Thirteen is stupid
I went to sleep with
The A/C on and woke up
With a dry mouth mouth
The grocery store is
Too far to get toi
Let paper emu
The shortest epic
Poem ever is in first per
Son; it just goes: "I..."
If I had to rhyme
These poems I would use a rhym
Ing dictionary
I wrote this in ba
By sign: drink drink more more more
More more more more more
I thought it might be
Fun to write seventeen hai
Kus but now I don't
Goodbye, goodbye, it's
Time to say goodbye so now
I say goodbye, good |
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| Law School, Day 1 |
[Sep. 4th, 2007|10:32 am] |
The first day of classes if going okay so far. I had contracts this morning, which is definitely an interesting class. I think all of us are still sort of trying to transition from doing all the preliminary reading on our own into class discussion, so we weren't that vocal today in class. It remains to be seen how energetic everybody gets (perhaps Contract law just doesn't get the juices flowing; maybe Torts will provide for a little more exuberance).
Yesterday, Vivien and I were out in Barrington with my Aunt Diane, and we went to a living history area called Old World Wisconsin. We visited houses where reenactors showed us the way people lived in Wisconsin during the mid to late 19th century. It was very interesting, although the mosquitoes were out in full force. |
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| Engagement Announcement |
[Aug. 13th, 2007|01:05 pm] |
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My older sister Courtney got engaged over the weekend. Her fiance is Nicholas Pierce, a descendant of the fancy food baron, S. S. Pierce. Nick is an accountant, and they are both in the process of buying a condo in the South End of Boston (a good indication that they will remain in Boston into the near future). We are all very excited for Courtney. The lucky pair are tres cosmopolitan, so the wedding should prove to be a haute gala. |
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| Simpsons review |
[Aug. 6th, 2007|09:54 pm] |
I didn't get to write this post before we left for Chicago, but I had this rattling around in my head to whole drive out here.
First off, let me say that I will be spoiling the movie, so: SPOILER ALERT! Or, as I decided I would henceforth call it: SPOILERT!
Now, if any of you knew me in high school, you knew I was a huge Simpsons fan. Lots of boys my age were, but I was the rare kind of TV addict who would soak up whole scenes like a sponge, and vocalize them verbatim during lunch for my willing (and sometimes unwilling) lunchtime audience. I loved the Simpsons. I watched every episode for the first five years, and watched most of those episodes multiple times in syndication as well. The night "Who Shot Mr. Burns Episode part II" aired, I was on the phone with friends making bets over who the culprit was. The Simpsons was one of my favorite things. So what happened?
Maturity, maybe. My parents really didn't like the Simpsons, and I honestly can't think of any adults who did. I would readily admit that there was never a clear point during the Simpsons run when the show clearly changed in caliber (unlike, say, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which I thought was one of the best shows on primetime for the first five seasons, and then when season 6 started, the show was totally different and much worse; it turns out the show runner had left and a new head producer took over, sending the style of the show in a different direction). I do know that sometime in season eight or nine, there was an episode that marked the low point for me in my love affair with the Simpsons, and I gave up trying to catch new episodes altogether (the show was a clips show- a montage of songs, with animated song segues between each clip- now, clips shows are typically in the contracts of primetime shows, because they are cheap to make and usually popular with audiences, so I don't hold the Simpsons' producers wholly responsible for this atrocity; however, I hate the songs used in the Simpsons (honestly, I hate almost all "musical comedy", especially in satire, because I feel like humorous songs are almost always the result of lazy writing), and that clips show was pretty much just the worst of the worst, in my opinion).
Or maybe what happened was that the Simpsons outlasted their cleverness. New shows came along aping the successful formula that the Simpsons had devised, and what had originally been revolutionary and exciting became stale and redundant. The brilliant writers had found a smart way to write an episode, and they didn't see any need to change. If they had stopped after six seasons, the Simpsons would have gone down in history as one of the greatest pieces of animated satire ever. As it is, the show will no doubt hold a spot in history as an important piece of satirical fiction, but I feel the Burns-like lifespan of the show will turn off future generations from watching every episode, and may cause some great episodes to be ignored simply because there is too much to choose from. That may just sound like an embarassment of riches, but the fact of the matter is that brevity is the soul of wit, and if humor is your game, you can't afford to be longwinded or needlessly repetitive.
So what about the movie, you say? Many years in the making, this movie has been anticipated for a long time, even by those (like me) who gave up on the Simpsons years ago. Was it more than I expected? No. Was it less than I expected? Not really.
The movie was funny. I felt like it would have made a better than average episode. There were aspects of the movie I appreciated because of the self-referential nature, and aspects I enjoyed because of the freshness and change of pace. But there was a key moment in the movie that summed up quite well the main problem I have with the Simpsons, and why I feel like a good show lost one of its biggest fans so many years ago.
Here is the main spoiler, and it won't really spoil the plot so much as just give away the best (in my opinion) joke in the movie, so stop reading if you haven't seen it and you don't want a good joke spoiled: Somewhere close to the end of the movie, Homer has to sneak back into Springfield and save his family from annihilation. In order to do this, he has to stop a group of soldiers driving a truck into the town. Homer spots a wrecking ball and some other construction material. We then cut to the interior of the truck, and the soldiers drive up to an intersection where a crudely made traffic sign is stuck into the ground. The sign is a crumpled red hexagon with the word "SOP" painted in dripping yellow paint on it. The implication is obvious: Homer has fashioned this sloppy sign from the available construction materials and stuck it in the ground in order to stop the convoy of trucks and soldiers. However, in his haste, Homer has left the "T" out of "STOP". Now, the real joke is when the driver of the truck turns to the passenger and says, "There's something weird about that 'SOP' sign." When I heard that line, I laughed for about a minute straight. That is classic Simpsons. Actually, that's a little better than the Simpsons, and more like a line I would expect to hear in Futurama. The scene then goes on with Homer trying to crush the truck with the wrecking ball, managing instead only to hurt himself. Had the "SOP" sign line been left as it was, I would have considered it a great success in an otherwise fairly typical stew of Simpsons-type humor. However, after the thirty seconds of slapstick humor with Homer beating himself up, the scene cuts back to the inside of the truck (where the soldiers are oblivious of Homer's wrecking ball antics), and the passenger responds to the driver's comment by saying, "Look, if you stop and comment about every 'YELD', 'SOP' and 'ONE VAY' sign, we're never going to get there." Now, I don't know exactly what this is implying, whether Homer was supposed to have created a number of other misspelled traffic signs, whether other people created other signs, whether the passenger is being sarcastic or whether it's just supposed to be a lunatic comment that attempts to further point out the ridiculousness of a misread "SOP" sign. Whatever the intent of this extra line is, the actual result is that it somewhat killed the initial joke. I still laugh when I think about the line "There's something weird about that 'SOP' sign", but I also cringe slightly when I think how the writers managed to suck much of the fun out of it by taking the joke too far. Of course, I understand that the writers were probably all sitting around, and one suggested a "YELD" sign, and after further discussion they probably landed on "SOP" being funnier, but then they decided to add in the additional "YELD" and "ONE VAY" jokes because they had them, and it would tack on a few more seconds to the overall runtime. Ultimately, I feel like that is the true embarassment of riches the Simpsons deals with now on the TV show. They have too many clever ideas, too many plots, and too many bad jokes that they just want to cram in there to keep things flowing at a steady pace of nonstop punchlines. It seems like instead of coming up with one storyline for a whole episode, they take a bunch of stories from a number of different spec scripts and tie them altogether into twenty one minutes of comedy. I'm sure the writing staff has a wealth of ideas coming in from their huge pool of co-producers and freelance writers. Rather than building up new jokes around one good plot, I'm guessing they take multiple plots, smash them together and then write jokes to fill in the cracks. The shows still end up being funny, but I feel less satisfied with the conclusion, because it doesn't feel like the episode had any point.
And that is the major problem with the movie. It's funny. I laughed at more than just the "SOP" line. But I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment when the story ended. The best Simpsons episodes would get to the meat of the story almost immediately (see for instance, The Monorail Episode, which is my favorite; they were talking about the monorail within the first five minutes of the show). The movie takes about twenty minutes just to sketch out the main premise, and the pay-off hardly seems more than just tacked on. I guess my final word is this: if you were ever a fan of the show, you know you have to go see the movie; however, don't expect any sort of rebirth; this is the same Simpsons you can still see on Sundays at 8. |
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| Chicagoland |
[Aug. 6th, 2007|09:39 pm] |
Well, Vivien and I are in Illinois now, out in Barrington with Aunt Diane. We made the drive in four days, without any big surprises.
The first night in Vegas was probably the worst (we staid at the Plaza downtown, which turned out to be a real hole).
Colorado was an awesome state to drive through, although the last two or three hours were spent in the dark winding through mountain roads with limited visibility and a decreased speed limit due to road work, so the 10.75 hours google maps predicted turned out to be more like 12-13 hours on the road.
Nebraska was ne-boring. All flat and featureless. Halfway through the state, trees started sprouted up and the terrain became a little more hilly, but it really was a dull, dull, dull drive. Ryan and I spent most of the time reminiscing about college and talking about various movies/music/TV we liked.
I think if I had to do it again, I would probably do two things differently: 1) I would go further than Vegas the first night, so that the drive to Denver on the second day isn't so long; and 2) I would probably try and find hotels outside of the big cities, because I feel like trying to find hotels in the downtown areas of Vegas, Denver and Omaha ended up putting us in crummy places. The Red Lion in Denver wasn't too bad, but we ended up sleeping right under the fitness room, so we were awakened the next morning at 6am by the loud racket from the treadmill.
I'm glad to finally be out here in Chicagoland. I am really looking forward to school starting, but for now, all I've really got to do is hang out and prepare myself mentally for the year to come. |
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| Sunshine |
[Jul. 23rd, 2007|05:18 pm] |
I saw Sunshine with Vivien last Friday. I very much enjoyed it, although the speculative science is highly suspect if not diverging almost entirely into magical realism.
If you are familiar with Danny Boyle's previous movies, I think you will be very satisfied with this, his latest, film. He has garnered for himself a reputation of being a sort of jack-of-all-genres, given his early success and the eclectic mix of topics his movies cover. Although, as I said, Sunshine hardly minds the science in it's science fiction (truthfully, there is a very beautiful veneer of scientific pretension, which, if I didn't have the inclination to question it, I might find it completely plausible), and it is more fitting to call the movie a thriller (I'll say no more, given that I hope some of you might see it for yourself, and though there isn't really a twist or surprise ending, there are secrets to the plot which must go unrevealed prior to viewing).
Here are the bare bones, anyway: the sun is dying and an expedition is sent out from Earth to launch a gigantic bomb into the heart of the sun and reignite it. The bomb is the size of Manhattan, and, as Cillian Murphy's character states near the middle of the film, all of the world's fissile material has been used in the making of the bomb (sort of), so it is truly Earth's last hope. The crew of the Icarus 2 are flying as close to the sun as they can in order to launch the bomb and hopefully save humanity. Given all this, the extreme importance of the mission lends itself to some interesting philosophical quandaries (akin to "If you could travel back in time and shoot Hitler, would you do it?") which get tested through the course of the film. In a similar vein to Ridly Scott's "Alien", Sunshine has a realism and lack of exploitation that save it from the most glaring logical plot holes.
Let's get back to the science for a minute. The ship lookes a lot like a space station latched onto the back of a giant umbrella. The umbrella serves as a shield against the sun's radiation-heavy light. The panels on the dome also serve as solar power panels. A lot of this seems fairly plausible, although they never talk much about how the dome could possibly be expected to shield the crew from the tremendous amount of radiation spilling out that close to the sun. There are a number of other flaws like that, but the most glaring for me (and kind of the litmus test for all space movies trying to adhere to some sort of plausible scientific conjecturing) is that the ship has some sort of artificial gravity. I just got finished reading Alastair Reynolds book "Revelation Space", and Reynolds idea for gravity on a space ship is to have the ship's constantly accelerating at a rate of 1g, thereby pushing the passengers down into the floor (in his book, spaceships are shaped like skyscrapers, with the top of the building serving as the nose of the ship). At first, I thought this may be how the ship in Sunshine was affecting the false gravity. But during the course of the film, the ship stops its forward progress, and yet the gravity remains. I can only conclude that the writer presumed some sort of deus ex machina in place of actually resolving the artificial gravity concept (there's a great line in "Thank You For Smoking" relevant here, in which Rob Lowe is dreaming up a scene for a movie in which an astronaut smokes a cigarette, and Aaron Eckhart says, "Isn't it dangerous to have an open flame in an oxygen rich environment like that?" and Rob Lowe responds, "Yeah, but we fix that with one line of dialogue. The guy says, 'Thank god we invented the whatever device that allows us to smoke in space.'")
Speaking of Aaron Eckhart, I should make it clear: Sunshine is better than "The Core". If you never saw that movie, count yourself lucky. If you did see it, then let me assure you that at the very least, Sunshine is entertaining and interesting, whereas "The Core" is like a worse version of "Armageddon", where they go down instead of up.
Overall, I suggest checking this movie out, if it is playing near you. I know right now it is only in limited release, and I know "The Simpsons" comes out next weekend, but maybe if enough people try and find a way to see Sunshine in the theater, studios will keep making interesting movies like this. And if you want a science fiction movie that really pushes the science hard, check out "Primer"-- well worth netflixing.
Also, I'm reading "Ivanhoe" right now. I had always heard this was a good book, but I feel like no one ever really trumpeted it loud enough to me, so hear goes: Ivanhoe is a great book! I highly reccommend it for anyone who enjoys the whole Robin Hood saga. It's funny and exciting and a real page turner, which is saying a lot for a book written in the early 1800's. |
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| The Astronaut Farmer |
[Jul. 11th, 2007|04:36 pm] |
If you are familiar with the Polish Brothers' movies, you probably know that they have a peculiar but inoffensive sense of humor. There movies are somewhere in between a Jim Jarmusch film and a Richard Donner flick. Sweet, cute and sometimes surreal, the plots often have a sort of arch twist to them. Not like an "O. Henry" type turn at the end, but rather the whole movie is centered around some clever odd conceit cobbled together from a variety of real-life sources. "Twin Falls Idaho" tells the story of conjoined brothers who try to convince a prostitute to take one of the brother's virginity (the Polish brothers are identical twins, and they play the conjoined brothers, and for all it's absurdity and grotesqueness, the movie is heavy with pathos and sympathetic characters). "Northfork" describes the evacuation of a patch of Montana countryside in the 50's; the state is building a hydro-electric dam which will flood the area, and officials are going to all the lonesome houses out on the prairies, trying to convince the odd locals to flee the oncoming deluge.
And then we get to "The Astronaut Farmer". This is the most ambitious of the Polish Brothers' films so far. And it is somewhat different. The storyline is much more conventional and straightforward. Unlike some of their previous films (I have not seen "Jackpot"), "The Astronaut Farmer" is hardly very quirky. In almost all respects, it is a fun, sweet-natured post-modern fairy tale. The characterizations are genuine and heart-felt without being cloying. The motivation of Billy Bob Thornton as the main character can get to seem a little one-dimensional, but he manages such a silent charm throughout the movie that it hardly matters.
What I've always liked most about the Polish Brothers is the way they stage key scenes with a strong theatrical sensibility. I can't say for sure if the actors are directed this way, but at least once in all their movies I imagine the scene being played out in front of a live audience, with the whole house tingling from the electricity bouncing between the players.
The dreamy nature of the story is very appealing, in an idealistic sort of way. I credit the Polish Brothers for managing to squeeze some wonder and sentimentality out of a plot that, if I were to see it in a synopsis, might sound a little hackneyed. Perhaps it's there determination to make Charlie Farmer read as a believable character, and the rocket as something one man really could accomplish. Of course, in truth the feat is infeasible. If I were a NASA engineer, I would probably scoff at any attempt for believability. But I'm not an engineer, and so I don't care. I enjoyed the movie because it made me feel hopeful for all family men who want to dream big but fear that their families will expect them to bury those dreams. If you want a nice, guilt-free movie-watching experience, I recommend renting this film. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 1st, 2007|09:14 pm] |
Well, Vivien and I went to see Rataouille this past weekend. It pretty much lived up to my expectations.
I should probably reiterate, in case anyone was wondering: I think "The Incredibles" is probably the best animated movie ever. There is so much about that movie that makes it great, and if there is one tiny little qualm that I have with it, it is this: the main storyline is not what I would call "timeless". Grant it, there are lots of aspects inherent in "The Incredibles" that make the overall message resonant with human experience in general, so it is possible to argue that the story will hold up quite well for a long time. I mean, Don Quixote is certainly not a timeless story, and yet I can still enjoy it 400+ years after it was first written. But "The Incredibles" is still solidly grounded in the early '00s as far as the specifics go: the interest in superhero archetypes (subject matter extensively explored by Alan Moore in "Watchmen", Kurt Busiek in "Astro City and Ben Edlund in "The Tick", among others), the loss of superheroes and its effect on society ("Kingdom Come", "Dark Knight Returns" and again "Watchmen), and the difficulty of hiding your true nature behind a mask of mediocrity/normalcy (pretty much every "Spiderman" comic, plus tons of other movies).
So in the sense that what I consider the best animated film ever is about something so relevant to a specific time and place in literary history (though not our actual history, obviously, since superheroes are fictional), it's gratifying to see Brad Bird's new Pixar film focus on a storyline that may have a little longer shelf-life in terms of audience approachability. That being said, I feel there are some serious flaws in "Ratatouille" that keep it from replacing "The Incredibles" as the best animated film ever. I will get to those flaws shortly, but first let me describe what "Ratatouille" is like, in case you haven't seen it, and need some perspective.
Imagine a movie that crosses "The Rats of Nimh" with ""An American Tale" and the kitchen scene introducing Rizzo the Rat from "The Muppets Take Manhattan". Throw in a little bit of "Watership Down" and "The Rescuers", and maybe a dash of Stanley Tucci's "Big Night". Finally, pour it into a mold shaped like "The Cricket in Times Square", and bake.
Now, stories like this certainly aren't new (and I'm not just talking about the examples above). For instance, "Charlotte's Web" and its uncredited sequel, "Babe". And how many stories are there about horses that get a second chance? (answer: about a billion). So "Ratatouille" isn't breaking new ground. Is that a problem? No. "The Incredibles" had tons of precedent for the story (all those comics I mentioned were all published prior to the release of "The Incredibles"). That shouldn't matter, if Brad Bird makes a good movie. Shakespeare hardly came up with a single new story idea for his plays (except for maybe "Hamlet"; am I far off on this? I'm not a Shakespeare buff, but I seem to remember reading how most of his plays were based on existing plays or stories). The important thing is: is "Ratatouille" entertaining and watchable? The answer is: yes and no.
The kitchen scenes are mesmerizing. There is one scene where Remy (the rat) is running around the kitchen, attempting to cook without being detected by the humans in the kitchen with him, and while watching it I just started laughing, because the staging and execution of the scene were almost too amazing to believe. The sounds and action and camera angles and movements and nonstop flow of events will astound, I promise; I'm thinking back to it, and I'm starting to suspect what may have been so unbelievable and entrancing about the scene was the fact that the whole thing might be one continuous, unbroken shot (it may not seem logical, but getting a continuous unbroken shot in animation is near as difficult as getting one in a live-action film, just because you have to storyboard almost every second of the shot to make sure the animators get everything in the right place, not to mention pretty much the same guys all have to work on the one long shot together, so that it all flows, which I won't go into it here but that's not typical of how animated films are made (also, if you don't know anything about continuous shots and cuts from one camera angle to another, then it probably wouldn't make much sense to go into it, but since you watch lots of movies and TV like me, you are subconsciously familiar with the fact that long unbroken shots are not usual except in fare created by only the most skilled directors, so the sequence I am talking about in "Ratatouille" may just effect you the same way it did me, simply because your mind will be trying to tell you, "They should be cutting by now, too much has gone on for the camera to still be going without any cuts")). Most of the kitchen scenes are like this: fast-paced, well-choreographed and elegant in the dance of all the characters. The settings and the attention to detail blow away everything prior, including "The Incredibles". The animation is art.
However, the story is patchy. The motivations of the characters are thin at best. The tension is manufactured. The drama is unengaging. The villians are redundant. The feel of the movie as a whole is light, airy, unsubtantial. Like a meal that tastes ridiculously good but does not fill you up, "Ratatouille" does not provide enough meat to leave you satisfied with the story. Which is actually not really a fault, or shouldn't be. French "New Wave" film is often lauded for having this very quality of lacking a strong plot. That is kind of the point of light romantic European films. You're not supposed to be looking for the dramatic ending. Normally, I would be okay with this. The problem, as I see it: Brad Bird did not take it far enough. He almost got there, and he almost managed to make a film that was simply about the imagery and taste. Look at a movie like "Big Night". For all the drama and tension, that movie really is just about the magnificence and glory of a well-cooked meal. If "Ratatouille" had forgone the spoon-fed moral or the requisite cartoonish slapstick, the movie may have been able to shatter American expectations for lunacy and over-the-top characters in animation. As it is, I think "Ratatouille" took a big step toward a new kind of animated film. I think Bird was going for something similar with "Iron Giant" (which I think is partly why that movie did so poorly in the box office). I still liked this movie a lot. Putting sentiments aside (because I really do love "Toy Story", "A Bug's Life" and "Finding Nemo"), "Ratatouille" is Pixar's second best film. However, I would not go so far as to say it is the second best animated film ever. I would probably award that title to "Spirited Away". Now there is a masterwork of adult-themed animation. If only Miyazaki could have worked with the brilliant animators at Pixar. Yet he is no longer working, and Brad Bird still is. Because of that, I'm grateful I got to see "Ratatouille", whatever its flaws may be. |
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| Ever and more, ever and more, ever and more |
[Jun. 26th, 2007|10:51 pm] |
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If you haven't been checking in to their site regularly, I just thought I would let you know that Homestarrunner really brings the funny this week. I always enjoy the new toons (pretty often a new one every week), but this week's I found particulary hilarious. It may be a little bizarre if you don't know the characters that well, but check it out if you are down with Homestar. |
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| 300 reasons not to watch 300 |
[Jun. 4th, 2007|06:49 pm] |
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I just watched 300, or as I will now forever refer to it: "300 frames per second". What a bad movie! Everything from the glorification of violence to the ridiculous grotesqueries to the neverending slo-mo. Oh my gosh! I do not reccommend this movie to anyone. It is fraught with hysteria and oversaturated with melodrama. Not to mention the dialogue! Ten times worse than "Gladiator"! Things like, "Beware thine own hubris". Who talks like that? You've already got your characters speaking in English. Why do you have to give them the diction of Victorian gothic romances? It's so stupid! I had read good reviews of this when it first came out. Were those reviewers watching the same movie? All I saw was a bunch of the same overused action movie tropes that always come into play when writers have nothing new to off to the genre. "It's not that I mind watching my son die for his country, it's just that I never told him he was my favorite, and that I was honored to fight at his side." |
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| Once and Future |
[May. 30th, 2007|08:39 pm] |
I saw "Once" last weekend. It's pretty good. I really like the music; the story is kind of nonexistent (or at least not terribly engaging). I guess that's kind of the point, although I felt that the intention was to lead you somewhere, only I feel like we got left where we were lead without any conclusion. But again, I really enjoyed the music. The movie stars Glen Hansard of The Frames, but the music is much more lo-fi than what you hear in Frames songs (from what I can tell; I'm not actually all that up on The Frames). Anyway, you might check it out if you've got a chance.
In other news, I've been working on a possible webisodic series. Right now, the project is still in it's conceptual stage. However, I have taken a little bit of time to investigate what's out there in the webiverse, and I've got to say, webvideo is kind of uninspiring.
Surely there are talented people out there with the inclination to produce something great in their basement. Look at the movie "Primer". Or the swell of homegrown Indie record labels like Saddle Creek or Asthmatic Kitty. The internet is the perfect place for this same type of semi-outsider-art-type innovation for episodic television. Are the really talented people just not trying? Or is it near impossible for their voices to be heard? Do they get scooped up so fast by the industry that any attempt at doing something episodic just becomes a one-off? Or are the the masses of users (who flock to content that I personally find of a much poorer quality) actually looking for something extremely simplistic and lo-fi because they find anything really engaging or entertaining insincere and even possibly crafted by clever viral marketers out to trick them into eventually buying into something? I definitely feel the internet still twinging with the pangs of computer-geek anarchism. The vast majority of content providers on the internet seem to be males between the ages of 15 and 34, an age range filled with anti-authoritarian inclinations (of course I can't confirm that statistic with anything beyond my own personal gut-feeling, and I happen to be in that age range, so perhaps it is all just my own bias coming into play). Regardless, I still question why so much of the video content on the internet seems to me to be lacking. My guess is that it has less to do with individual talent, and more to do with the nature of film production. Film is such a collaborative effort, that even if you have a good writer, or a good director, or a good editor, you may still be lacking in a number of other areas that all result in a very poor product. Or an unreliable product, at least. Who wouldn't jump ship from a non-paying web project at the first hint of regular pay and a chance to work with a team of professionals? I know I'm really fishing for an art history lesson from my father here, but can you name a great artist in the past who did work of an entirely philanthropic nature, with no expectation of reward or accolades? |
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| If I was Superman |
[May. 15th, 2007|04:16 pm] |
If I was Superman, the first thing I would do is finally get my ingrown toenail removed.
Then I would fly out to Las Vegas, and use my x-ray vision-- to see how David Copperfield does his tricks. But because I'm Superman, I wouldn't tell anyone; except Batman, since we're friends.
If I were Superman, every four years, I would go to the Olympics, and just laugh and laugh. And I'd get really patronizing, and tell one of the athletes, "My doctor put me on steroids because I'm too strong, and steroids make me weaker." Then I'd have to kill the athlete, so he wouldn't tell my enemies that steroids make me weaker.
To impress the ladies, I would take a piece of coal and crush it into a diamond, and then to impress the nerds, I would crush it again into a carbon nano-tube. Not that Superman has to do much to impress the nerds, am I right?
I bet Superman has a hard time at the laundro-mat, you know? Because in my experience, everyone has a hard time at the laundro-mat.
I can just imagine Superman at your college graduation, going up and getting his diploma, and then flying off the stage into the distance, and you watch him, thinking, "I wonder if I'll ever see Superman again." Then ten years later, you get an invitation to your reunion and you think, "Oh god, I hope Superman isn't there. I'll be so depressed if I have to tell Superman what I've done with my life." But you go anyway, and Superman is there, only he's fat and bald and he tells everyone he lost his powers shortly after college and got a normal boring job. But at the end of the night, when you're going out to your car, you happen to see Superman flying off into the night sky, and it dawns on you that it had all been an act he put on to make you and your classmates feel better about your lives. I imagine it's at that point that you realize what a condescending ass Superman is.
If I was Superman, I would use my super-hearing to listen to concerts for free from the parking lot, because that's what I used to do anyway, and when you're at a Steve Miller Band concert, the action is in the parking lot.
As Superman, I would make it my civic duty to blow the President's farts away from the direction of any crowds, because the public should never smell their President's farts.
If I was Superman, I would pretend I didn't know you and let you beat me up in front of the girl you like. But then, when she isn't looking, I would burn a little hole in your ankle with my heat-vision, just so you remember which one of us is Superman!
I'm not Superman. I wish I was Superman. The only problem is, I'm lazy. I would be a lazy, lazy Superman. There would be a disaster, and everybody would say, "Go on, Superman! Go save those poor people!" And I would be hobbling along, going, "Geez, they gotta have these disasters so far away? You can't have a four-alarm fire down the street from me? I mean, I'm Superman, okay, I'm not... Gilgamesh."
But you know who the real Supermen are? All the fathers out there, am I right? You guys work hard so your kids can have a good life, and you should be proud. But not too proud, cause... you can't fly. You can't bend steel. You can't stop a tornado with your breath. All you did was make some babies and rack up debt. But you do love your kids, right? And that makes you Supermen in my book. Although that's only a figure of speech; I'm not actually writing a book about you guys, because unlike the real Superman, you guys are booooooring! |
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| My Mind Was Running Hot and Cold |
[May. 7th, 2007|05:38 pm] |
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It is like warm soup outside today. I took a trip to Staples and bought a tub of ice cream before heading home. It was a race against time. Time almost won. I came in first by a nose, and my ice cream was sweating bullets by the time I handed it off to the freezer for reacclimation. I thought about how nice it would be if there was a catapult at the store which would fire the ice cream at my apartment just after I bought it. I figure, if I could get the carton up a few thousand feet, the air is cooler up there, plus it would get back to my apartment much faster than going through afternoon traffic. Then I started to think about whether it would be more energy efficient to float all my refrigerated food at a few thousand feet with a balloon, instead of keeping it inside a refrigerator. Would I expend more energy hauling food up and down on pulleys? And would that even keep my food cold? What if I had a space elevator? Surely that would keep my food cold from geosynchronous orbit. But the energy to transport the food would definitely be much too high. Then I started thinking about using my air conditioner to cool the inside of the car down, trying to prevent the melting of the ice cream. The grocery bag was on the passenger side floor, right under the foot level vents. Does cool air blown across a frozen surface actually work against the concept of keeping that surface as cold as possible? Because if the air is not actually below freezing, wouldn't it be transferring heat to the ice cream container faster than if I didn't have any air blowing on it all, even if it means the average temperature stays higher than it would with the blower on? My theory is that lowering the temperature in the car is a good idea, but you shouldn't have the ice cream under a vent unless the air is actually below freezing. This is one of those ideas that I plan on giving to my kids to use for their science fair projects (more because I want to know the answer then because I want them to have a good project idea; maybe I'll just make them do science experiments for my own edification, regardless of fairs or class assignments (and come to think of it, one of my other "projected experiments" has to do with things melting as well: does ice melt faster in an empty glass or in a glass full of water? I'm pretty sure I know the answer already, but I still believe this would be a really easy experiment for my kids to do for their own growth)). |
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| Dreamics |
[May. 4th, 2007|12:57 pm] |
I had a couple of weird dreams this morning, or more like one weird dream in which I envisioned two separately bizarre things. Both of them were comics, which is pretty unusual for me. The first comic looked something like this:
Two grotesquely wrinkled guys are standing next to each other, and one of them pulls out a gun and shoots himself in the head. Part of his head goes flying off from the exiting bullet, and the other guy turns and nonchalantly says, "You've got a little bit of schmootz in your ear," and the other guy, with his head half off, sarcastically responds, "Riiiiii-iiight." And part of the weird thing about the whole dream experience was that in the dream, the comic didn't feel gruesome or macabre at all, and in fact I thought it was rather silly, even though the characters were drawn in a grotesque way and the image was overall pretty gory.
I think I'm going to draw the other comic, so watch for a new posting soon. |
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| A Night I Find I Don't Regret |
[Apr. 29th, 2007|09:24 pm] |
Vivien and I went to see Crowded House this past Friday night. In case you don't know who CH are, they had a song in the 80's called "Don't Dream It's Over" that was big and now appears on a lot of "hits of the 80's" albums. Anyway, Vivien is a huge fan, but the band has been broken up for ten years, and so she's never seen them in concert, so going to see them last Friday was a big deal. Right now, she's watching a webcam broadcast of their performance happening right this moment out at the Coachella music festival, which, if you don't know what that is, then you are probably over 30. Coachella is this huge pseudo-indie music festival (I don't say "pseudo" to be disparaging, it's just that the intent of the festival seems to be one of an indie vibe, but the music is a bit more eclectic and arguably far less indie than, say, SXSW, which if you don't know what that is, then probably none of what I'm saying will much interest you) that they hold out in the desert; it's pretty expensive, and really REALLY hot (it's the desert!), but there are tons of bands ranging from OK to awesome there. All of that is decoration to what I'm really here to talk about, which is Crowded House, and seeing them on Friday, but since I can hear them playing over Vivien's computer behind me right now, I will address the Coachella atmosphere a little more, and try and tie it all back into the Friday show in a way that makes sense.
You see, Coachella is for young people; it's a financial extravagance that most older folks would find prohibitive or a rip-off; it's physically demanding, since you're outside under the scorching sun (temperatures up in the 100's during the day) all day long, and you can't bring in any outside comestibles, so even water is a commodity for the concert promoters; the vast majority of bands are totally obscure and probably didn't exist two years ago much less twenty years ago (this means you have to be tapped-in to even be interested in most of this music); even though it's SoCal and Lethargy Valley in terms of the crowd's vibe, you still have to be conscious that most of the folks are young, tattooed, pierced and poor, and so wrinkles and faded concert shirts from the mid 80's don't really fit in, unless you're trying to be ironic (at least with the t-shirts; wrinkles aren't really ironic). My point here is that if you were a fan of Crowded House back in the day, there's a good chance you won't be up for Coachella (my wife is an exception, because she was a fan when she was 9; seriously). It's a shame, too, because Crowded House is good and engaging in a folksy kind of way. Their music isn't cynical or ironic or retro or overthought. Neil Finn (the lead singer and primary songwriter) is just a straight-from-the-heart songwriter, and his lyrics talk about things that really mean something to him. The music is catchy and poppy but it isn't cloying or forgettable. Crowded House is a good band, but it's hard to compete with a bunch of 90's kids anxiously waiting to see the reunion of Rage Against the Machine. See, that's what CH is up against right now. They are playing to a crowd that is primarily waiting to see a band younger and more resonant with the crowd's generation. Most of those people are much more likely to have specific memories about the first time they heard Rage songs than the first time they heard CH songs. I'm not going to go on a rant about the hypocritical corporate nonsense of Rage Against the Machine, a band I personally find to be the epitome of corrupted messages and sell-out politics- and the subsequent total lack of sincerity in the music produced by that band- but I will say that the inclusion of Rage on the roster tells me that Coachella is definitely not an indie music festival, and bands like Crowded House are probably asked to be a part of the show more because of their availability and mass appeal than because of any intention of including a good rock band in with the line-up of "popular" bands. All this ends with me saying it's a shame that Crowded House's third show after reuniting has to be in front of a bunch of trendies in their later 20's, many of whom probably don't even know who CH are, and all of them antsy to see a band that rightfully should have only about 2% of the indie cred that Crowded House has.
Which brings me back to Friday night, a night when Crowded House really rocked and had the audience in thrall for a good two and a half hours. I have to say I really enjoyed their show. They are consummate performers and even though the club was dry and mostly filled with aging hipsters, everyone seemed to have a righteous good time. The crowd treated each other nicely- "rowdiness" is one of the biggest reasons I can't stand going to concerts anymore (of course, this probably has everything to do with the lack of alcohol, which makes sense, since I don't drink, so since everybody else was (mostly) sober, the audience was going through what I normally go through at every event like that, which was "normal reactions to other people", as opposed to "drunken interactions with other people"). The band got everybody excited even without the social lubricants, and even though I'm not a huge fan of the band (I know I sound like a cheerleader with some of the stuff I said above, but just get me started on bands I really do like; then you'll see some poetics truly waxed) I was trying to sing along with the rest of the crowd on some of their songs. All in all, I would call the night a few hours well spent, and if you get a chance to see Crowded House in concert, I would suggest you think about taking that chance. You may not regret it. |
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| Prophetic Rhetoric |
[Apr. 19th, 2007|03:50 pm] |
Every time I read something about people charging other people with "turning their backs on the troops", it sets my teeth on edge. It is completely baffling to me how that kind of so-called rhetoric can be ceaselessly recycled. Where I disagree so strongly with that line of thinking is not in the mere idea that criticizing the war isn't the same as criticizing the troops, and that bad decisions made by leaders should be fair game without construing that the "boys on the ground" are somehow being criticized as well. I think that kind of rebuttal is just as wrong-headed as the original claim that any criticism is hurtful to the troops. My attitude is, "Why can't I criticize the troops?" I pay for them, every single one of them. I, along with the rest of the citizenry, fund for the existence of those troops. And I'm not allowed to criticize them? I have never agreed with this war, and I don't agree with the concept that "our glorious protectors" should be above scrutiny.
Alas, methinks these quarrels are not new to this time. I was reading Jeremiah (you know, the book in the bible) the other day*, and I came across a telling passage that held resonance for me with current events. Firstly, I'll explain to you what Jeremiah is mostly about, if you don't know: Jeremiah is an Old Testament prophet. This means he was a really unpopular critic of his own people (that's what all the prophets were), a curmudgeon who berated all the people around him for being amoral and turning their backs on God. And Jeremiah particularly had it in for his fellow Judeans (or fellow Israelites, depending on how you want to classify them). At that time, the Babylonians (also called the "Chaldeans", which it's pretty typical in the Old Testament for ehtnicities to have multiple names) were attacking Jerusalem, and Jeremiah was busy telling everyone that God was punishing them, and that they should all surrender to the Babylonians, because eventually God would forgive them and bring them back to Jerusalem, but only if they let Nebuchadnezzar's army defeat them and take them all back to Babylon as slaves. None of the Israelites liked that idea, and they hated Jeremiah for telling it to them. So the Judeans fought against the Babylonians and eventually lost. Anyway, during the siege of Jerusalem, Jeremiah was spreading the word that everyone should "give up" because the war was a "failure". The princes of the city went to the king to complain, as in Jer 38, 4: '"This man ought to be put to death," the princes said to the king; "he demoralizes the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such things to them; he is not interested in the welfare of our people, but in their ruin."' (emphasis mine)
The important thing to note in the above quote is that Jeremiah was right. I mean, he's the one who got his own book in the Old Testament, right? Jerusalem was defeated by the Babylonians. The princes were just being a bunch of sniveling cowards, trying to kill the messenger (of God) rather than facing the fact that they were losing the war. The parallel this verse held with what we hear in the political ballyhoo of today struck me as truly prophetic. Of course, I'm a poor student of history, and I'm willing to bet that this same rhetorical tactic has been in practice since before Jeremiah's time all the way up through history until today, so perhaps it wasn't all that synchronistic of an event I experienced readind that particular text. However, I am strong proponent of the "coincidences as tiny miracles" school of thought, and prefer to see my coming across the topical passage as something of a nudge from above, sort of like a text message from God.
There are a few things I believe after all is said and done. I believe the war in Iraq was wrong from the start, and we never should have started it. I believe that joining the army and fighting in an unnecessary and wrong-headed war does not automatically make you a hero who should be held above the judgement of your fellow men. I believe that cynically accepting the criminal behavior of those around you, including international crimes committed by people you passively allowed to overtake your country, is equivalent to being an accessory to those crimes. I believe that reacting with a blase attitude about the dark road your society is heading down- or even just criticizing society in general without doing some serious personal inventory-taking of your own direction in life- is a cop-out, and ultimately puts you in that same morally limbic area as the passive cynic. And I guess I believe things can get better, if we all work really hard at making ourselves into better people. At least, I want to believe that.
*I don't personally think there is anything wrong with reading the bible, but I have to admit that in the past, when I heard someone say something like "I was reading Ezekiel the other day", I myself have rolled my eyes and thought, "Doesn't this guy have anything better to do with his time then sit around reading excerpts from the bible?!" There's nothing wrong with bible study, but somehow casually mentioning that you're "reading over some chapters in the Old Testament" comes off sounding smug or self-righteous... or something. I don't know exactly what, but after reading over the comment above, I just felt like I had to come out and explain straight up that I am in fact attempting to read the entire bible, front to back, without any skipping around, as a sort of "ultimate primer" for getting into classic literature in general. I feel like it is one of the most referenced sources of Western literature, and is therefore a good starting point for a personal quest to delve deep into Western society's Literary Canon. Of course, reading back over this footnote, I feel like I'm coming off way more smug and conceited now then I sounded in my original comment above, so I think it's probably a good idea to just leave off here. |
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| Wait Listed |
[Apr. 16th, 2007|12:04 pm] |
In the Law School admissions quest, there are four possible states you can be in (with regard to each school you apply to), once you have sent your applications in. The first state is "Waiting to hear back from a School", a state that I have become very familiar with. The second form of existence you can obtain is "Being rejected from a School", of which I am not familiar with at this point. The third form is "Being accepted by a School"; I have experienced this twice, and am currently enjoying this form of existence with a school I would be more than happy to attend. The final state of existence that one may occupy is perhaps the most nerve-wracking: "Being sequestered to the Wait List". I am now on three wait lists. First Michigan, then UCLA and now Penn. I am happy they did not reject me outright, yet I feel like an outright rejection would have at least removed them entirely from my decision tree. Now, instead of having the simple choice of picking between schools I got into, I have to play poker with my options, waiting for the final cards to be turned over before I can see whether I won or lost.
I will wait. I am on their lists, and so I must. But I also must ask myself. Are they worth waiting for? Or are they just using me, keeping me on retainer in case more promising prospects fall through? Perhaps I should write an essay about the nature of wait lists, and send it to each school. Are we all essentially just waiting for a better option to fall through before we make our final decision? I may never actually be accepted by these schools, but if I am, it is because a student they would have preferred over me rejected them. I sometimes wish the schools just all got together, each school in the top 100 sending a representative with all of that year's applicants names, and they just hashed out between themselves who would get to go where. That way, applicants would only get accepted by one school, and so they wouldn't have the option to reject other schools, thus eliminating the need for wait lists. Does that make me a communist? |
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