my friend andy c passed away this morning. he’s been in the hospital for weeks and it’s a miracle that he lasted this long. but at least he was surrounded by the ones he loved, his friends and family, and now there’s no more suffering.
say a prayer for someone special.
we caught brokeback mountain last night. (final tally: 8 nights, 6 films. not too shabby. even better, all of them were good!)
it’s the gay cowboy movie, if you haven’t been paying attention.
how is it? it’s fantastic.
this may be the best thing i’ve seen all year. it’s directed by ang lee, and it’s his return to form. ang lee not of crouching tiger, but ang lee of the ice storm. certainly not the confused ang lee of the hulk.
brokeback is so beautiful, so delicate, so wonderful, it really makes you glad that movies even exist. it manages to convey such a sense of wonderful doomed romance, yet without any heavy-handed melodramatic tricks that syriana was so dutifully trying to avoid. the fact that it has gay cowobys is really almost incidental. it’s just a wonderful story.
really fantastic.
go see it. unless you’re too scared to see a gay cowboy movie. are you too much of a pussy to see a gay cowboy movie? because that’s the kind of people gay cowboys prey on.
as we continue with our goal of a movie a night…
syriana - while you are impressed by the intricate interweaving of several plotlines into a coherent whole(and not ridiculously trite: i’m talking about you, crash), you still can’t help but feeling that this is son of traffic or traffic 2: petroleum boogaloo. it’s deftly done, but there seems to be a distinct emphasis on making sure we don’t connect emotionally with any of the characters, but that we keep them at a distance. thus, you’re intellectually fascinated, and it’s enthralling, but at the end you don’t really care if anyone wins or loses any more than you wonder why george clooney has that really huge beard in the first place.
the constant gardener - i think i actually liked this a bit more, as a companion in the “evil corporations exploit people and fuck the world for their own gain” ouvre. the difference here is instead of having a dozen plotlines intertwine and untwine that we don’t connect with, they instead use the love story to set a strong emotional component that you can identify and empathize with, which then hooks you in and makes you care about the larger wrong on a more personal basis. hmc noted that while stephen gagan (the writer/director of syriana) should be commended for trying to avoid all of those hollywood emotional manipulative tricks, you still can’t forget what those tricks are there to do in the first place: to draw you in and make you care about the story. which is exactly what works in gardener.
(side note: is the tessa character preggers in the book, too? or did they just do that because rachel weisz was preggers? if not, how do you cast for that? “quick, get me all the young actresses who are pregnant and will be visibly showing when we start shooting in six months! and who will do tasteful pregnant nudity! or maybe we can get someone knocked up?”)
we’ve been staying down here at dj’s place in hermosa beach, which is where hmc has been while working during this gig. since dj’s away in mexico this week, he suggested we sleep in his big comfy tempur-pedic bed. the bed is fine, but the apartment is otherwise a little cold, especially at night. somehow we ended up without a decent comforter, so we’ve got this small comforter and an unzipped sleeping bag as blankets, which didn’t quite cover everything, so we ended up pulling in a couple of throw blankets from the living room as well.
but you end up sleeping with all these little throws that may or may not cover you as you try to sleep through the night. this is not unlike using dishtowels to keep you warm at night.
finally, i ask hmc, wait, so what do you normally use for sleeping at night? she replies, “uh, i just sleep in the sleeping bag.”
what?
are you kidding? it turns out she’s been sleeping in the sleeping bag on top of her bed for warmth since september. i am dumbfounded. HAVE I MARRIED A HOBO?
i took her out to target and bought a decent quilt and comforter so we can sleep like decent folk and not like those who ride boxcars.
i certainly don’t want to put up a list of everything we got, but i did want to touch on three things:
egg and muffin toaster. yes, you laugh, but now lazy people like me can get eggs and toast every morning. hmc loves it. i love it. and you can blame my parents for suggesting it in the first place. you know you want one!
the list:
aliens (special edition)
atlantic city
kill!
king kong (1933)
mad max special edition
monsieur hulot’s holiday
once upon a time in the west
rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead
the unbearable lightness of being
the wages of fear
the wild bunch
warner bros. pictures gangsters collection:
- the public enemy
- white heat
- angels with dirty faces
- little caesar
- the petrified forest
- the roaring twenties
we saw king kong last night. i’ve been trying to figure out what to say about it. aside from:
wow.
ok, yes, it’s long. really long. at 3 hours+, possibly a little too long.
but boy, does it look good. fantastic. incredible. there are so many incredible action scenes that just look gorgeous and amazing. the visual effects may be the best i’ve ever seen. in anything. yes, including lords. or spidermen. or matrixexexes.
i’m not sure what they should have cut out, but i can certainly see how they got to the current length:
producer: peter, we’ve got to cut out something. it’s too long! sure, it’s great, but it’s too long!
peter: yeah, but look at this scene. it looks fantastic!
producer: yeah, it really does. damn.
peter: plus, i made everyone a boatload of money on rings. so everyone shut the hell up.
producer: …
assorted ramblings:
whatever you do, go see this film. in the theatre. find the largest screen you can possibly find (the arclight cinerama dome works nicely) and go see it. because it does look fantastic.
quick fantasy football venting ahead. all sane people please feel free to skip. because it’s not that interesting if you don’t follow fantasy football. and why should you, really? you’ve got a life, actual interests. or at least fantasies that are honest and healthy. that probably involve sexy nurses. or at least eager schoolgirls.
well, despite rampaging through the regular season with a record of 12-2, i lost my semifinal game to my archenemy this week, and am now playing for consolation scraps. i can’t really feel too bad about it, since there’s not a lot you can do when three of your players get injured on the same day (ladanian, ronnie brown, kennison). still, if i had only waffled back and started willie parker and any other receiver than kennison, i would have eked out a win!
alas, there’s always next year, i suppose.
all week long, i knew it was coming up.
“this week, soon!” i kept muttering to myself. i watched the odometer: 99,873. 99,921. 99,985.
however, amongst all of the running around and the being late and rushing to pick up hmc from the airport yesterday in order to get her home in time to get ready for the andc and then also go pick up paula on the way, i missed it.
somewhere over the bridge, on the way to oakland, i glanced down.
100,004.
alas.
i’m sure there’s some moral here about life moving pretty fast, and that if you don’t stop and look around once in awhile you could miss it.
ferris buellerisms aside, quick stats show that this means 13,187 mi/year, or 1,099 mi/month.
there’s no meaning in it. i just like meaningless stats.
congratulations, little ‘99 (‘98) miata m2.
just got back from seeing the narnia movie.
eh.
well, it was all right, but inevitably comparing it to lord of the rings, i did find that it suffered from being a children’s book in that the movie was very simple and not that deep. there were really no subplots, and if it wasn’t happening on screen you didn’t have to think about it or keep track of it. which is fine for children perhaps, but maybe not for adults.
oddly enough, i did read the chronicles of narnia several times when i was younger, and never did read the lord of the rings, so you’d think i’d have more fondness for the source material.
as for the film, it just felt like lords-lite: the battle scenes were sort of impressive but not quite in the same scale, the monsters were cool looking but not “HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THE OLIPHAUNTS” cool, and once again, there’s really a clear difference in having martial artists do your fight scenes instead of having your actors do your fight scenese. a really bad difference.
still, i liked tilda. she’s a nice swath of calculating cruel, although i still can’t figure out what’s up with her witch costumes.
on second thought, don’t pander films down for your kids. start them off with dr. mabuse and then work your way up to wages of fear! otherwise they’ll end up loving fantastic 4!
more stupid personality tests:
Link: The 32-Type Dating Test |
i’m not really sure what to do with that, honestly. where do i find these nymphs, billy goats, peaches, and window shoppers? it’d be easier if everyone just had a name tag. or a tattoo. or even rfid tags, so you can just date by scanner.
perhaps more interesting was the test that juan took:
| ISTJ - “Mastermind”. Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population. |
correction: it’s hard to be successful in sales if you don’t listen to people.
at the behest of cc, we went to see blowfly, the original dirty rapper. apparently he’s a legend. sure, he claims to have written the original dirty rap song, cleverly titled, “rapp dirty.” but who hasn’t done something like that back in the day? me, i’m actually responsible for the original lusty hip hop haiku, “haiku lizzle hizzle”:
oh baby baby
mmmm honey you look so fine
word to your mother
anyway, even flavorpill hyped this thing up:
as for blowfly, he was introduced by none other than jello biafra, who i had just minutes before mocked for wearing godawful (or godawfug) red girly pirate boots. blowfly came out in a silver sparkley superhero costume, complete with mask and cape, and proceeded to lay out some dope rhymes. and by “dope rhymes” i mean “really sad yet infantile purile lines that vaguely rhymed if you weren’t paying too much attention but were tittilated like an eleven year old who was excited some sixty year old guy in a cape kept talking about his dick”.
you know, i can actually get that for free down in the tenderloin. and it’d only cost me a bottle of mad dog. maybe not even that much.
but let yourself be the judge. example lyrics:
i fucked everything
because everything is you
and don’t forget that holiday classic:
pussy wasn’t made for drugs.
it’s for
ramming and slamming
douching and gushing
kissing… and a lot of pissing
yeah. for some reason we left early. it turns out that we should have gone to the midnight screening of the gay cowboy movie instead. or i should have stuck to my original plan of seeing “walk the line” and then sneaking into harry potter imax.
but then i wouldn’t be so educated.
i went in for my second acupuncture session today.
so to be honest, when all the needles were in my wrist, it did hurt less and i could move it around a lot more without any pain.
now if i could just get her to let me keep the needles in there, i’d be fine.
i talked to my parents and told them i had had acupuncture on my wrist.
they said, “don’t waste your time with that! that’s all nonsense! it doesn’t work!”
ah, the wonders of eastern medicine.
oh, so how’s the wrist doing?
well, first of i probably shouldn’t be using the computer so much. that can’t really help.
it’s been a couple of weeks and it’s still pretty painful. i was using the brace, but then it started cutting of circulation to my thumb and making it numb. sudden triage: do you save the thumb or the wrist? quick! too late!
i had some acupuncture done on it last thursday, which seemed to help a little at the time, but it isn’t that much better. and just because i’m hard core, she also threw in some moxibustion:
There are two types of moxibustion: direct and indirect. In direct moxibustion, a small, cone-shaped amount of moxa is placed on top of an acupuncture point and burned. This type of moxibustion is further categorized into two types: scarring and non-scarring. With scarring moxibustion, the moxa is placed on a point, ignited, and allowed to remain onto the point until it burns out completely. This may lead to localized scarring, blisters and scarring after healing. With non-scarring moxibustion, the moxa is placed on the point and lit, but is extinguished or removed before it burns the skin. The patient will experience a pleasant heating sensation that penetrates deep into the skin, but should not experience any pain, blistering or scarring unless the moxa is left in place for too long.
is it any different after all that? eh. but i’m trying to have a more open and long term view, that it’s not really realistic for this to have some sudden miracle cure.
although that’s really what i’m hoping for.
we’re not only the tallest in the world, but we might take the rest of it down with us:
Lin Cheng-horng, a geologist at the Institute of Earth Sciences at Taiwan’s most prestigious think tank, the Academia Sinica, said seismic activity historically had been low in the Taipei basin, home to about 7 million people.
But the city has experienced more micro-earthquakes (of magnitude 2.0-2.5 on the Richter scale) since construction began on the 508 meter (1,667 foot) skyscraper in 1997, he said.
Two earthquakes of magnitude 3.8 and 3.2 occurred directly beneath Taipei 101 in October 2004 and March 2005, he said.
“There is a distinct possibility of earthquakes being triggered by the recent construction of the world’s highest building, the imposing Taipei 101,” Lin wrote in an article published in the Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 32 on Nov. 30.
“Should seismic activity remain high or, even worse, should it significantly increase, then the possibility of earthquakes being triggered by the high-rise building will become ever so much more of a reality,” he wrote.
…
Lin said Taipei 101 weighed 700,000 tons and estimated stress from vertical loading on its foundation at 4.7 bars, of which some would be transferred to the earth’s upper crust due to extremely soft sedimentary rocks beneath the Taipei basin.
…
“I don’t know if it’s just coincidence or if they are related,” he said. “It’s very hard to prove this scientifically, but it’s just as hard to disprove it.”
…
The $1.7 billion Taipei 101, an office tower and shopping complex, was built to withstand tremors measuring above magnitude 7.
how does this score on the geek/nerd/dork scale? the fact that i submitted a question to espn’s fantasy football column? or the fact that i got it answered?
Engel: Green and Delhomme haven’t been dependable, but they are both more proven than Garrard, so stick with those two QBs while playing the matchups the rest of the way. Garrard will keep the Jaguars’ offense moving respectably, though, and the ground game will continue to be effective. Plus, Jacksonville has an easy schedule during the final few weeks. So don’t worry about the defense getting overworked. Tennessee and Miami both have major defensive holes. But it’s worth it to add the Vikings, who have scored 61 ESPN.com fantasy points over the past four games, and use them over the Jaguars. But keep Jacksonville’s defense in case Minnesota starts to slide again.
or the fact that i used my cat’s name to submit the question, which they promptly misspelled/corrected?
