Apparently, first and third base coaches have to wear a helmet during games next year. I get it, since a coach got hit by a ball and died, but this seems like an overreaction to me. Just like John Olerud always looked like an idiot wearing a helmet on first base, coaches wearing helmets on the field will look like fools and I'm not happy about it.
Talking heads [other than Tina Weymouth, but including David Byrne] are speculating that by signing Derek Anderson, the Cleveland Browns are entrusting him with their future and sitting Brady Quinn's ass on the bench for another year. I'm not so sure. The Browns have no first round picks; look for them to trade Anderson for some picks and christen #10 as the new QB. Edwards and Winslow like Brady more, anyway, and I mean just imagine how much EAS Myoplex he's been drinking...
The Cardinals front office took quick action in dismissing Scott Spiezio. I approve.
Lastly, congratulations to Juan Gonzalez, the [temporary] Cardinal, for taking Johan Santana deep during a minor league game today, thoroughly owning the $135.7-million dollar man. His line? 2 IP, 4 H, 3 ER. Welcome to the Senior Circuit, Johan.
;or, 120 minutes of George Clooney looking very dissatisfied
Major Hollywood thriller boxes to be checked:
- Criticisms of major American institutions
- Morally/ethically ambiguous protagonist
- In medias res
- Overdramatized, though shiningly current representations
- Hard stares, overwhelming tones of gravitas
That said, I did enjoy the film. Also, honestly, perhaps the 'overdramatic' characterization is mere wishful thinking. I mean, I certainly hope I'm not as dissatisfied with myself as Clooney's character in eighteen months. Despite a few wandering and useless subplots and an overall lack of believability, Michael Clayton was engaging and fun to watch if not quite as important as it seems to believe itself to be. But damn if Clooney doesn't look really upset throughout the entire thing.
Scott Spiezio is wanted for a hit and run DUI... After dealing with substance abuse last year. I hope for the best for this guy, but if he's going to be a liability on the team, he should be cut loose.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the North Pacific Gyre, location of the world's largest floating waste dump. Reminds me of an exhibit on the future's dirty water at the St. Louis Science Center.
While I did enjoy this film, I couldn't help but feel that Gondry was pulling his punches throughout the entire feature. Hints of his incredible visual imagination pop through here and there, but save for a few particularly notable scenes, the mad cardboard genius is kept under wraps.
From a thematic perspective, the film is somewhat stronger. Universal or shared culture is very now. However, if you're looking for something to make you cry like Gondry's other films, don't look here.
So I guess this isn't very descriptive, but it would not be inaccurate to say that I expected a lot more from the film than I got. I dislike Jack Black and think that Mos Def mumbles way too much, so that could have influenced my experience... but Gondry is still awesome so at the end of the day this gets a thumbs up from me.
The process of watching Batchelor Party has been long and complicated. From a very early age, I acknowledged that Bachelor Party was your typical 80s comedy but with Tom Hanks. However, in an almost [almost] comedic fashion, the film has evaded me for nearly eight years.
The first time I ever encountered Bachelor Party was in the basement of my friend in tenth grade [I think] where my Korean friend saw the VHS tape and decided to borrow it. I immediately realized that the tape was a Tom Hanks movie and therefore not porn and that he was wasting his time. However, every time I thought about renting that video from Blockbuster since then, my efforts have been foiled [credit it to either the incredible morality or perversity of Vienna]. Even for the past two years I've been a Netflix subscriber, it's taken until now for the movie to get to me.
However, last night, I finally watched Bachelor Party.
And lo, it was exactly, exactly, the slightly above medicore 80s comedy that I expected. And here is a shotgun review.
First, Tom Hanks is a top rate actor and in Bachelor Party, his charisma shows through. However, his surrounding cast is simply awful. Most of the supporting actors seem to be chosen based on the quality of their bodies [this includes women and men], and it is pretty unnerving.
The one actor who I recognized besides Tom Hanks was the student villain from Revenge of the Nerds [a film which still costs $15 new on Amazon, which is a fucking crime] minus his braces. That isn't a good sign.
This is not even beginning to mention the fact that I've favored the interpretation of the Bachelor Party Bachelor Party in the Bachelor Party universe. If at my actual bachelor party [or a bachelor party thrown for my closest friends] there is actually bestiality, some shit shooting a crossbow, or a suicidal drug addict, it's all over. Dude, Tom Hanks' character was just so tolerant.
Ultimately, Bachelor Party is an emotionless guide as to what not to do when you get married and is worth of three stars but just barely that.
"Knee-jerk Bush bashing is a fixture of pretty much every rap show I've ever attended, which makes me wonder what will happen if Obama is elected President. Will the instant applause line "Fuck George Bush" be replaced by "Make some motherfucking noise if you're cautiously optimistic about Obama's Presidency yet concerned that, like Jimmy Carter before him, he will ultimately disappoint his core constituency and not follow through on some of his stirring campaign rhetoric in the face of partisan bickering and the need to placate a broader spectrum of voters! Aw yeah!"
Even the most vital works can deteriorate over time. Some might say that only works which lack any great inherent value become less vital or relevant over time, but others might just as well argue that any given work's continued importance is just as easily attributed to an arbitrarily established canon of works and society's own unpredictable vacillations.
At any rate, to me it is quite obvious that one great work which has not exactly remained vital and fresh over the last 15 years is the song "Cannonball" by The Breeders. There are more than a few things about the song itself and especially the video which would be simply inconceivable for a popular rock song in the year 2008.
1) While both Kim and Kelley Deal are kind of cute in their own way, neither they nor any other Breeder are attractive enough to be a star in 2008. This is particularly true of the only male Breeder in the video for Cannonball. The drummer proudly sports a royal blue tee tucked in with sleeves just barely but extremely awkwardly too long for comfort, not even to bring up his decidedly un-2008 indie rocker hair cut. The standard for alternative drummers in 2008 was much lower.
2) The stoic/ironic delivery of the stringed-instrument playing section of the Breeders might work if you're on 4AD and your video is being directed by Kim Gordon, but that doesn't play in 08. Yeah, even though at its core, the early 90s was way much more about authenticity and truth than now, ironically it's all about the faux-earnest delivery today; but you gotta look good at the same time, of course.
3) Low-tech effects like the bowling ball tracking shot and KiD's underwater screams/whistle blows are simply not up to standards. I guess they were programming on Windows 3.1 back then, but it really shows how much technology has progressed in the meantime. I mean, double exposures, analog tv effects, and hand drawn-stutter-borders strike me right in the center of the heart where it feels so good, but if anyone else were doing that shit today it would look way too amateur for its own good.
4) Let's not discuss the implications of cross dressing and gender roles in early 90s alt rock because that is really a post unto itself. Which reminds me - happy birthday Kurt.
5) Time to drink coffee, turn up Elastica, and watch a Christian Slater movie.
So the bottom line is that context is of supreme importance. I love this video with all of my heart but even just 15 years removed, it is nearly incomprehensible to anyone who watches it. It takes me, an early 90s scholar, to interpret exactly what the hell is going on and I admit it is most likely a very imperfect interpretation at that. How much less can any of us interpret a novel, a symphony, a historical event from the 18th century or a thousand years ago? Context is really important and any attempt to analyze anything out of it is doomed to failure.
I haven't seen it yet, but my sources indicate that John Munch appears in the most recent episode of The Wire. Concurrent with the appearance of Munch [which is entirely expected in a Baltimore police drama] means that The Wire has entered into the Tommy Westphall Universe. The Westphall hypothesis states that by linking characters common to the series St. Elsewhere, which took place in the mind of the character Tommy Westphall, a large proportion of all television has taken place in the imagination of Tommy Westphall. I personally find the entire proposition more than a little silly, but it is kind of fun to track Munch in his various iterations across the television landscape.
The actor who plays Much is pretty unique in his predilection for conspiracy theory, glasses, and misanthropy. Munch himself is pretty similar in general. I don't know a single other character as prolific as Munch, so for that reason, Richard Belzer and his character pleases me greatly, especially in The Wire.
Boyz N The Hood: Squeaky clean virgin Cuba Gooding Jr. is the main character. Later starred in Snow Dogs.
Menace II Society: More nuanced and ambiguously moral main character.
Boyz N The Hood: Diversions on themes of fatherhood and gentrification.
Menace II Society: Contemplations on the breakdown of society and imminent anarchy.
Menace II Society also has the superior soundtrack, which is huge.
Also, don't get me started on New Jack City; which is a cinematic abomination that indulges in every bad early 90s movie technique and has a ridiculously annoying early Chris Rock. Gang Tapes, however, is a latter-day underrated classic.
However, Boyz N The Hood does reference Tecmo Bowl.
I thought foreign films were supposed to be difficult to enjoy, cynical, and pretentious. Many of the best ones I've seen have been exactly that, but the two films that I've seen by Truffaut, aren't. Day For Night and Small Change incredibly charming and lack the bold and borderline [ok, extremely] pretentious flourishes of many other French directors. It's fairly clear that he's a huge influence on Wes Anderson, whose films are similarly charming and straightforward from a storytelling standpoint while still having a unique stylistic approach.
French, generally, have a reputation for being tough and complex to appreciate. The food, the artists, the directors, the culture... and so on. Truffaut bucks this tend. I'd highly recommend him for people who are open to foreign films but have no taste for pretension or cynicism.
Pitches and catchers report to spring training in Jupiter, Florida today. My Mac is showing signs of life and may not have to take a trip to the dungeon. (aka Cavalier Computers) The cycle of life is a beautiful thing; I feel rejuvenated.
Now, before anybody gets the wrong idea, in no way am I anything remotely approaching a serious tennis fan. I bear it no ill will, but I'm not exactly David Foster Wallace. Yet, Jimmy Connors is unquestionably my favorite tennis player.
Why Jimmy Connors? I'll readily admit that not once have I seen him play tennis. I was not alive the last time he won a major tournament. Why do I admire Jimmy Connors so much?
The first time I even heard of Jimmy Connors was when this huge new house was going up near my neighborhood. It was ridiculously mansion-sized, especially compared to some of the smaller houses around. It even had a smaller house around back which was rumored to be used for a variety of purposes. The neighborhood kids theorized it was a gigantic doll house, a butler's house, a pool house (though I do not think there was a pool), or half a dozen other things. There was a huge fountain out front and a gate surrounding it.
This house was being built by Jimmy Connors for his fuck-up brother. After its construction, for whatever reason, there was a huge controversy about its financing and nobody ever lived in it as far as I can remember. The developer then had huge problems trying to sell the house to somebody else because nobody really wanted to live in a house that outsized all the other houses around it by a wide margin and, actually, nobody really wanted to live in Belleville. The house became kind of a blight on the entire Oak Hill neighborhood. The Oak Hill swimming pool (it was the cool pool because it was under a dome and you could swim in it all the time but everyone knew that the fun pool was Dorchester [my pool] where you could play tennis baseball and adults could drink Zima) was shut down and filled in with cement.
So to summarize, Belleville is kind of a screwed up place. This little anecdote does very little in explaining its true nature, but to do so would take a work on the magnitude of one by David Foster Wallace. It's where I grew up and it's where Jimmy Connors grew up. So that's why I like Jimmy Connors.
So last night, when installing the latest update to the Mac OS, my laptop decided to croak. I don't think that the damage is irreparable, but I definitely feel dirty while typing this blog post on a Dell while using Internet Explorer. In the past, I've only turned on my PC when using Netflix Watch Instantly (though that problem should be resolved with OS X soon), so this is kind of an unsettling experience.
Silver lining: my desire to go to class is low enough that I can milk my broken computer as an excuse not to go for at least one more day. Of course, I also think that the variety of illnesses ravaging the law school right now is another good reason... I might just stay here at home until next week, or at least until Das Klub.
I'd really like to get to the bottom of something. Often, when I go out to eat at nice places, I can't help but revert into a mode where I'm being taken out by my parents. I tend not to order cocktails, veer toward fish and chicken on the menu, and even act a little more humbly. It isn't the expense per se, I think it's just that I'm not totally willing to accept the fact that I am or am becoming a relatively mature human being and going out to eat at nice places while paying for it yourself is not a huge deal. I don't know any other mature adult who makes frequent blog posts about Nintendo, Kanye West, and misfortunate scientists, so I don't think I'm all the way there yet. However, if I took catalogue of my life right now and compared it to what I was doing, say, ten years ago, I don't think things would be that much different.
24: Compulsively watching "The Wire," "Weird Science," "Rushmore." 14: Compulsively watching "Homicide: Life on the Street," "Weird Science," "Mystery Science Theatre 3000."
24: Playing Halo 3, Mario Kart, Zelda. 14: Playing Zelda, Tecmo Super Bowl, Mario Kart
24: Listening to the Clash, MCR, Kanye West. 14: Listening to Rancid, Smashing Pumpkins, Puff Daddy.
24: Being totally awkward at social events, getting drunk. 14: Being totally awkward at social events.
24: Going out to eat, paying for it. 14: Going out to eat, not paying for it.
So, I got a Wii today. I purchased the system with one, and only one, game in mind: Smash Bros Brawl. Is is weird of me to drop $500 for the almost sole purpose of playing one game? Maybe, but this game is the culmination of a childhood of Nintendo obsession. Besides, what else am I going to do with that money? Go out on nice dinners? Take trips to exotic places? Revamp my wardrobe? Please, none of those come close to the visceral glory of Smash Bros Brawl... I guess.
Kanye's crazy performance with Daft Punk at the Grammys last night. Please come to JPJ, Kanye and bring yr wonderful robots and their pyramid, please. Awesome. kthnxbai
Cracked the Enigma code, which proved essential in defeating the Nazis.
Turing test, advancing the study of artificial intelligence
Ultimate fate:
Arrested for being homosexual, subjected to estrogen treatments by the state, probably killed himself with a poisoned apple.
The story of Alan Turing is really one that burns me up. A universally acknowledged hero who contributed a priceless piece of the destruction of the Nazi empire, who was so brilliant in many other areas of his field, subjected to humiliation and criminal liability for being gay and then presumably killing himself due to the pressure exerted on him. Heads up, Alan Turing, you should be remembered.
Today is a day that makes the investment into an hdtv worthwhile. No, not the football game... Puppy Bowl. Three hours of playful nonsense by all varieties of man's best friend. In HD. It is awesome. At least switch it on during halftime. You'll be glad you did, except the referee guy is kind of weird...
Ok so generally I dislike personal video blogging, but for some reason I did click the link from some random website to this kid's page and I'm damn glad I did. The video above should give you enough background, but basically pruane2forever aka "sexman" is a pre-teen age kid with a great sense of candor and willingness to let it all out all over the internet. He's young enough to be really weird without worrying about the inevitable consequences, straightforward, and most importantly, seems completely honest. He's the voice of a new generation. And that generation hates Jerry Seinfeld, loves Rambo, hates porn addicts, and is against lion suicide. One guy with a camera doing his own thing. He's only been video blogging for about a week and a half, and already he's a moderate internet superstar. And for good reason. Sexman, you rule, never change.
Apparently, first and third base coaches have to wear a helmet during games next year. I get it, since a coach got hit by a ball and died, but this seems like an overreaction to me. Just like John Olerud always looked like an idiot wearing a helmet on first base, coaches wearing helmets on the field will look like fools and I'm not happy about it.
;or, 120 minutes of George Clooney looking very dissatisfied 
