Opinions and FactsWow. Frickin' wow. Totally worthy of all the hype. Intense. It felt like two movies worth of experience, at least (in the best possible way). So dense. Heath Ledger is as amazing as everyone has been touting (or expecting). Not once was I pulled out of the movie by bad CG. Brutal without being graphically gory.
Though this movie obviously requires some suspension of disbelief, there was only really one thing that snapped my suspension of disbelief for a nanosecond but then I got over it and was back in this amazing film.
My one complaint, and it is oh so minor, Christian Bale's voice when he's batman and not Bruce Wayne. It's just too gruff and affected. It makes him hard to understand and sounds like he's desperately in need of a bat-lozenge for his throat. As one comedian put it after "Batman Begins", it's a little like cookie monster playing Batman.
"DO YOU HAVE A COOKIE FOR BATMAN?"
I WILL be seeing this movie again in the IMAX. It almost demands multiple viewings to process it all.
In another interesting twist, my acting career idol, Gary Oldman, plays probably the most boring, normal, plain part of his career. A part that's so not "Gary Oldmanesque". And yet, in a strange twist, it being so different in itself kind of makes it Gary Oldmanesque! Don't get me wrong, he does a great job and I love his character, he's just so normal, plain and kind of boring (the character, no Gary Oldman).
See this movie. Multiple times. Genius.
When I was a kid, I had the album "Chipmunk Punk". This was a 1980 album of Alvin and the Chipmunks doing 9 songs that were not really in any way, punk, but were pretty cool and influential to me. This album actually introduced me to a lot of songs that I would later come to really love. At the time, I had never heard of "The Knack" and I don't think I had heard of most of the other songs on the album either. I just knew I liked the Chipmunks as we had a cool clear red album of theirs from 1969.
Recently I was thinking back on this and realized just what a weird album this was. The track listing was:
Side A
Now the first thing I noticed is that one third of the songs are from The Knack. Now don't get me wrong, I love The Knack's debut album "Get The Knack" which spawned all three of these songs, but to have three of nine songs by The Knack, who I had never even heard of at that time, seems an odd choice. Were the producers friends with The Knack? Did they get a hellaciously good deal on song rights?
Secondly, though I remember very specific changes they made to the lyrics to make them more kid friendly, those three songs from The Knack are racy! They're all about trying to get laid. Sure they changed "Til she's sitting on your face" to "Til she's sitting in your place" but a few lyrical changes do not change the overall subject of the song.
I don't really remember realizing at the time what these songs were about, but again in hindsight, WHOA! How did this album get made?
"You thought you heard her saying 'Good Girls don't'...but she's been telling you 'Good girls don't but I do."
"Frustrated" is all about blue balls, basically. Some girl not putting out.
"My Sharona", all about lusting after this young teenage girl.
Again, I ask, HOW DID THIS ALBUM GET MADE AND RELEASED? All I know is I'm glad it did, because I played the hell out of it and was introduced to some awesome music. I own every one of those songs on CD by the original artists. Except for "How Do I Make You". I can't remember how that one goes but I remember I liked the Chipmunk's version of it. Somehow I listened to this album repeatedly without ever really realizing how inappropriate some of the songs probably were for a nine year old boy.
I had an experience a few weeks ago that made me realize just how lucky i am to live a fairly prejudice-free life. I am generally surrounded by non-prejudiced people in a fairly non-prejudiced town, at least to the point where something like this actually took me by surprise which is a good thing.
I was at a band gig when one of my band mates was talking about his family trip to Disneyworld. This individual is a very generous generally great guy but he's also an old country boy farmer. Sometimes these things just don't seem to go together, such as when him, his wife and their teenage daughter were talking about how they happened to be at Disneyworld for gay pride day. And, oh my goodness, they were surrounded by GAY PEOPLE! Shock! horror! And, I quote, "It was disgusting!"
I sat there kind of fuming trying to figure out exactly how to handle this. I had no idea what to say or do. I wanted to speak up but in a non-confrontational way that would hopefully reach them and make them think instead of just alienating them but I just couldn't think of anything to say. I ended up muttering sarcastically, "Oh no, gay people," but no one really heard and I didn't want to make a point by repeating it or whatever. I think the real shame is that their daughter, who is a bright, intelligent girl, is having this kind of thing put in her head.
There are so many people in the world and the vast majority of them are going to be different from you in at least some ways. Sometimes you have close friends who are good people and yet have some pretty major differences from you. Sometimes that can be really hard. I actually wondered, albeit only briefly, "Do I really want to be in a band with people like this?"
I have always been a big fan of "The Twilight Zone". I remember my uncle and grandmother watching reruns when I was growing up and I think that it probably stuck in my psyche somewhere pretty deep and played a part in forming who I am.
A while back I bought the entire series on DVD (box set with episodes in order of airing). We've started watching them from the beginning and I've noticed some peculiar things. Now let me first say that, yes, I do realize that TV was a completely different beast back then as well as movies and probably just general storytelling techniques. I still love this show but have noticed it's tendency to assume that the viewer is so stupid as to be just shy of brain dead. This is kind of funny because on the other hand it can go to some pretty cerebral places too so it almost seems as if it's catering to really smart folks and people who are dumber than a box of non-sentient rocks.
For example, in one episode, Burgess Meredith plays a man who loves to read. So much so that at lunch time he goes into the vault of the bank where he works to read. One day while in the vault, the world gets destroyed by H-bombs but he survives since he was in the vault. We see all this on screen. Well we don't actually see the H-bombs and such but it's all illustrated quite clearly.
Then, upon leaving the vault and seeing the state of the world, he monologues to himself (since everyone else is dead) something along the lines of:
"Oh my god! The world was destroyed by H-bombs! Everyone is dead except for me! *a look of realization* I survived because I was in the vault!"
Well. That was a bit of totally unnecessary exposition! And we just won't mention the two dimensional character that was his harpy of a wife who refused to let him read at home.
Then there was another episode where these astronauts go missing off the radar as they launch. It turns out they've crash landed on "an asteroid" as they call it. An asteroid with an perfectly human compatible atmosphere and mountains and stuff. O.K. so they really should have just called it a planet. Then they have a conversation about how, from the looks of things, the sun appears to be the same distance and trajectory as from the Earth meaning that they must be on an asteroid in the same orbit as the Earth!
So basically, five minutes into the episode, they've just hit you over the head with their "twist" ending. OMG! It wasn't an asteroid at all! It turns out they had just crashed in the Nevada desert! All that strife and killing wasn't necessary after all!
As I said, I just find these things fun to nitpick. I still think The Twilight Zone is an awesome, brilliant, landmark show.
The misuse of the word "literally" has gotten out of hand. It's everywhere. Even in the media and printed materials. Ever since I have had discussions about this with friends, we've all suddenly become attuned to it and have started noticing how rampant it is. It's like when Roddy Piper got those sunglasses in "They Live!" and could suddenly see all the aliens or whatever they were. People say things like "It literally blew my mind!" Umm, no it didn't. I know this from the fact that they were standing there telling me this.
Two recent observances that really stuck out to me were in video game related materials. In an ad for the Super Smash Brothers Brawl game it said "...literally anything can happen, and usually does!" Wow, that's some serious technology they've developed there. So it's totally possible and in fact likely that I could be playing the game and suddenly see Dennis De Young from Styx fly in on a half-dolphin, half-bagel creature with purple monkeys flying out his butt.
In a review of Assassin's Creed on gamespot.com the reviewer mentioned how the game's atmosphere was so great that it was "...literally a living, breathing world." Again, I really had no idea this kind of technology existed! They should really let some top scientists study this stuff!
We have friends who use this word in what seems like every other sentence. It seems like they just use it for unnecessary emphasis or something like, "I was like, literally, just sitting there eating my dinner..." Really? I'm glad you specified because I thought you meant it figuratively. You know, that old colloquial saying, "eating my dinner" meaning that you were building a wooden effigy of the Bee Gees.
I have always been anti-smoking. My mom has smoked for pretty much my entire life and I always hated it. Hated the smell. Hated that I seem to be extra sensitive to smoke. The slightest whiff, even from quite some distance can choke me up. For example, tonight, several people were smoking on the balcony with the door open and I had to close my bedroom door because I could smell it. Of course there's also the extreme amount of money smokers spend and the whole issue of supporting the evil tobacco companies and plenty of other rational arguments that could be made even if you're one of the people who believes that there is no scientific evidence that smoking is linked to health problems, but that's a whole other subject and I don't want to start that debate here. My issue is more personal.
The part I don't understand is my own vehement reaction to it. With everything going on with Jess, I think one of things that hurts the most is that she has started smoking again. She smoked before I knew her but had quit before we met. The fact that it even registers on my radar sounds ridiculous even to me. Why do I care so much? Why is it such a big deal? Why is it so important to me that my loved ones not smoke? I feel the same sense of hurt and distance when Larry occasionally smokes too. Now don't get me wrong, I know that no one is doing it to be hurtful or anything. I just don't understand why it means so much to me. The first time I saw jess light up on our balcony, let's just say my reaction was completely and irrationally emotional. Maybe because of our separation my subconscious read more into it like because she knows how much it means to me maybe I stupidly saw it as a big final "fuck you" which, of course, I know it isn't. I'm sure we all know the stupid things we can think when we're emotional.
But the fact is is that is a big deal to me and I don't know why. I don't think it's a judgmental thing, but admittedly I could be wrong. I don't think any less of her for it and I don't think I'm better than people who smoke. I really do think it's more of a connection thing. It makes me feel distant and disconnected and I do legitimately worry about the health of the people I love and supporting the evil empires of tobacco (which ironically is a trait directly instilled in me by Jess). To me it feels like it comes from a place of caring and concern and not a confrontational or judgmental place. I value my connections with people and anything that interfers with those connections bothers me.
I just don't understand why I feel the way I do. I don't want it to interfere with my connection. Why can't I just not care about it? When Larry smokes, I feel down. When Jess smokes it's of a whole other order of magnitude. It feels like it almost hurts as much as our separation which should be ludicrous! I'm sure there must be some deep subconscious motivation at work here. I just can't figure out what it is. I'm really trying to be better about this and at least not be judgmental or sanctimonious about my feelings. I'd love to find the root of this and find a way to overcome it.
For Christmas I received not one, but two copies of the new Beatles album, "Love" which I had desperately been wanting ever since learning of it. For anyone who doesn't know, Cirque Du Soleil wanted to do a Beatles themed show so George Martin and his son Giles took the original Beatles master tapes, put them in a metaphorical blender and came up with some amazing musical casseroles, some pieced together like Frankenstein's monster, with amazing results. Some songs have the vocals from one song set to the music from a completely different song with various textures from even more songs thrown in, while some other songs are changed very little from the originals but almost everything has at least some small subtle bits from other songs creeping in.
I definitely think the die hard Beatles fans (like myself) will reap the deepest rewards from this collection but even more casual Beatles fans can't miss the more extreme remixes and sound collages which, in my opinion, are by far the best and most amazing. This album continues to elicit goose bumps from me even several after listenings. I'm just about as big a Beatles fan as there is but I have yet to be able to trace each bit of each song back to its origin. The end of "Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite" mixed with "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" sounds to me like a pristine aural representation of Hell, and I mean that in a wonderful, pure genius way. Listening to this album is like being caught in some strange wormhole where the entire Beatles catalog exists as one living, breathing entity; time and space ripple and fold back on themselves as sounds and images fade and meld into each other and through you.
I've evangelized for years about the genius of George Martin and how I think his role as producer had as much effect on the end result of Beatles records as the 4 Beatles themselves had in writing and playing them and I think this album puts his talents on display more than ever. Just listen to "Anthology" and you can hear a demo of a good song end up as a true masterpiece due in no small part to Martin's input.
The album is also available in two formats, standard CD, and a double CD+DVD version which includes the whole album (with some slightly longer versions of some songs) in 5.1 surround sound. This is an absolute must hear. Absolutely one of the most creative and amazing things I've heard in a long time.
BS Newswire:
In their continuing efforts to counter the buzz surrounding presidential hopeful Barack Obama, the republican party released this statement:
We've already touched on how "Obama" sounds frighteningly close to "Osama" and how his middle name is "Hussein", but we think this latest link can not be ignored. How could any patriotic American not be concerned about the similarity of the names "Barack" and "Baraka". For those who do not know, "Baraka" was a monstrous enemy in the popular and exceedingly violent video game, "Mortal Kombat". As you can see in this photo, he had a demonic, clearly anti-Christian visage and two deadly metal swords in his forearms. The only logical conclusion to the parallels between these two entities is that if we let Barack Obama into the Oval Office, he will most likely perform a "fatality" on this country. If you support Obama, then you are obviously a freedom-hating demon lover who wants to see America have its skull and spine ripped out in one fluid motion and then mockingly shown to its own momentarily standing body.
Everyone needs to go see this movie, NOW. The very next showing. Best film I have seen in ages. Jess, Larry and I were all completely blown away. Brilliant. Flawless. Words can not express. Go see it.
Everyone who likes to use the internet and access all websites equally should at least give a glance to www.savetheinternet.com. There is a lot of information and some handy links and such to allow you to easily send your representatives a message stating that the Internet should star neutral, free and unmanipulated by corporations who would love to have control over what websites get precedence.
If you want to truly know who I am as a person, check out these albums:
"Hey Album!" and "Ready, Sex, Go" by The Marvelous 3
"Left of Self Centered" and "Letters" by Butch Walker
I've decided that Butch Walker's catalog (including his work with Marvelous 3) is a pretty damn good representation of my soul if it were converted to music and packaged on CD. There is such a great range from rocking, funny, witty songs to intensely passionate and emotional songs which you feel as much as you listen to.
So apparently I missed "Blog Against Sexism" day. I don't really have anything in particular to say, but wanted to say something. We live in a time when sexism, racism, and all kinds of other isms have insidiously weaved themselves into the very fabric of our culture. So much so that many are completely blind to them.
As a species, we are very arrogant and think that we are the end all be all to life in the universe, when the truth is that we are not nearly as evolved as we would like to think. There is still far too much ignorance and intolerance in the world for us to be so high and mighty. I pretty much leave the crusading to my wife, but I guess I'll just boil it down to my simplest though here: there may be differences between men and women (not just physical but real differences in our makeup, the way we think, the way our brains are wired, who knows), but that is meaningless. That is true on an individual basis, not just a sex/race/whatever basis. Next time you find yourself about to apply a stereotype to someone, take a moment and think about it. Try to catch yourself forming preconceptions of people. We all do it. If we can catch even just one, and instead get to know someone for who they are and not who we think they are, then I think that's something good.
I think the irony is that anyone who finds themselves thinking that someone else is inferior because of their sex/race/etc is guaranteed to be the inferior one.
I read a quote somewhere that the latest Beatles biography, "The Beatles: The Biography" by Bob Spitz should now be considered the definitive Beatles Biography. I could not agree more. This book is an absolute must for any Beatles fan.
Much of what is presented in this book has been presented many times before, and in fact the "notes" section, in addition to crediting every source of every quote, does a great job at summarizing how determining the accuracy of much of the Beatles canon is next to impossible. However the presentation is exactly what makes this book so great. It is not presented as an encyclopedia of facts. Information is conveyed in such a way that by the time you are done reading you will feel like you actually lived through it; as if you just took an actual journey through time from before any of the Beatles were born through the heights of their historic unmatched fame, to their sad deterioration and slow crumbling demise. It's all told in a very narrative and engaging fashion.
It's an absolutely amazing journey with an emotional resonance that can't be described. This is one of those few books that is not simply just a good read, it is an experience. There are many people who are referred to as "The Fifth Beatle", but by the end of this book, you'll feel as if The Fifth Beatle was you.
Many of you have probably heard of "collectible card games", the most popular one being "Magic: The Gathering." After Magic became such a huge hit, everyone on the face of the planet was mandated to put out their own CCG, 99% of which quickly faded into obscurity. Well I've just stumbled upon something even cooler. A "Constructible Strategy Game" and even better yet, it's all about pirates! I present to you "Pirates". Each pack contains everything you need to play: cards that you punch pieces out of to construct your 3-D pirate ships, a punch out island, treasure tokens, crew member tokens, and instructions. It's a simple little game that looks like it could be a lot of fun. It's similar to the "CCG's in that there's a whole list of ships and crew members which you try and "collect" ranging in rarity. Their website has a lot of great information including a flash animated set of instructions and game examples. We just bought a couple of packs and will probably end up with one or two packs from each expansion. Check it out!
I figured that using a song title from their first album was apropos as it represents my relaitonship with the second album. It is indeed growing on me the more I listen to it. Jess just pointed out a lyric that I had to share:
"I had never seen a set of eyes more hazelerer"