It's Been Some Time

Well hello. I've been a little stagnant for the past month or two, no real reason, just drifted away from the keyboard. Mainly been working, both at home and on the road, trying to get some exercise, playing 40k and CoD:WaW, listening to music, watching movies, planning for southby... generally having a good time. We are still keeping up with Lost but dropped off of Heroes. What are you gonna do.

My mom gave me the first tape of the audiobook version of Gates of Eden, and I was able to listen to it last week. Right off the bat you've got John Goodman having a generally casual but sometimes heated one-sided conversation with a stranger in a bar about his joyful liasons with a murdered man's wife, and I'm not spoiling it to tell you she did it. Now you know that sounds worth your time. They're all narrated by Coen Bras stars, and I can't wait to get my hands on the rest of them. Will advise.

I'm slowly rolling through The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, very enjoyable. It took a turn I wasn't expecting at the conclusion of the first Part and I am looking forward to the conclusion. Do recommend.

Some movies:

Quarantine - Hey, wow, way better than I expected. I mean, it's definitely a cheesy horror flick. But it's a zombie movie, so for me it starts out on the better end. And even though some parts were fairly predictable, I still enjoyed it. I never experienced the headaches some people got from the 1st person, camcorder-style horror movies (e.g. The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield), but if YOU did, just wash your lil cooter out and take a few advil before you watch this one. 3/5 stars.

Babylon A.D. - Ehhh. I wanted to enjoy it... I just couldn't. The end was just weird, maybe if I read the book it might make more sense. It was a book first, right? 1.5/5 stars.

Religulous - Well, this one was an easy sell. Big balls to Bill. 4/5 stars.

Pineapple Express - Started off funny but got boring, didn't even finish it. Poop stars.

Deadly Friend - Watch this weird 1986 horror movie just to see Kristy Swanson pretend to have a robot brain. Hilarious. 2/5 stars.

Near Dark - The guy that plays Nathan Petrelli from Heroes is a country boy that joins up with grimy vampires played by people from Aliens. Meh. 1.5 stars.

Burn After Reading - Definitely amusing at times (mostly just the Clooney scenes), but overall not my favorite Coen movie. Even Brad Pitt, whose bizarre character cracked me up in the preview, did not really keep my attention after all. And Frances McDormand is awesome but just not in this one. Oh well. 3/5 stars.

W. - This was about what I expected, and I really liked it. I thought almost all the actors did an awesome job, especially Josh Brolin (W.) and Thandi Newton (Condi), and even though it clearly takes some liberties, what matters in the end result: Shitstorm Ground Zero 2009, the truth still hurts more than the fiction. Thanks for nothing, you cocks. 4/5 stars.

Now watch this awesome Daily Show clip about CNBC and some of the big crow-fattened CEOs.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

I've Been Walking The Streets At Night...

I found this interesting article in the New Yorker, written by a recent guest on The Colbert Report, Malcolm Gladwell, about the Flynn Effect, which describes the way I.Q. scores have increased over the past years, and how it seems to say more about the limitations of the test itself rather than the mental retardation of our ancestors that backwards score projections might suggest. Ironically, while trying to emphasize how much smarter we aren't these days, he quoted this sentence from Flynn himself: "If the everyday world is your cognitive home, it is not natural to detach abstractions and logic and the hypothetical from their concrete referents." A painful brainful. And IQ tests apparently measure how "modern" we are, rather than how smart. My problem is, I just don't get the point of pointing this all out. It's very interesting research, but first off, I think he's being a little too apologistic, naive, and P.C. when he assumes that most people would agree with there being some vast difference between the descriptors "more likely to advance, technologically and scientifically" and "intelligent." That smart vs. dumb actually describes a different quality than civilized vs. primitive. Aren't those synonyms? Seems like he should be talking about "clever," or "crafty." And secondly, fuck an IQ test anyway! I live in an arrogant top-notch, so fresh, so clean, modern society, and I've never been required to take one; in my experience they're a fucking joke, some free quiz on the internet that doesn't mean shit anyway! As far as I'm concerned it's disproving astrology, big whoop. Do people actually use these tests for something scientific? It only seems to matter when you're wanting to classify someone as ward of the state or not, technically insane rather than criminally guilty, etc, and if it really comes down to it, I'll give anyone the benefit of the fucking doubt anyway if the result's them being confined to a mental hospital. Committed and jail seems about the same to me: pretty damn horrorshow. If anything, jail should be more like a mental hospital anyway, if the goal is anything more than retribution. Eh, I'm just blathering on at this point. In any case, I don't want to give the impression I didn't enjoy the piece. The Colbert interview started fun but it cut him a little short for a show with supposedly no writing. Last I heard Viacom wasn't making any deals just yet, maybe I'm out of date.

Portishead set a date, don't be late, it's probably going to be something great. Third, though? I mean, I guess they already burned their one self-titled album, but Dummy was such a perfect name to go with the depressed, numbed out sound back when it was fresh.

We finished the first season of Deadwood, very enjoyable. Superior dialogue. Endless sardonic knife fights. The curious, "ad-hoc" process of the town coming together. How suffering is in everyone's faces at all times and the different ways the various characters deal with it. The fates of Kristen Bell's character and her brother, shit! Everytime I'm expecting a cliché they manage to pull crazy ivans. These premium cable networks just pump this shit out, and it just seems like there's an awfully high ratio of quality - there should be more total stinkers per true gem.

Well, the Aussie Open was a little anticlimatic. Jokey put the hurt on Federer, guess I'll start calling him "Chokabitch." My favorite match was Baghdatis-Hewitt, just an awesome struggle to the end, and I was sad Layton didn't make it any further than he did. There was plenty of auxiliary drama. Freakin crazy eastern Europeans.

How Long? Walter E. Long!

We went to Decker Lake on Sunday (a.k.a. Walter E. Long Lake) for a little fishing action with the pops. It's supposed to be "excellent" for bass fishing and I've heard good things about the white bass there but we didn't run into much luck. First, we tried for some catfish early on with some cut up shrimp and bobbers in the power plant outlet; nothing doing. Then we moved around the main bend in the lake and checked out a little cove where shad were jumping, a good sign. We threw in a few spoons and floating lures with no response until my dad confirmed that the dark shape I had earlier witnessed chasing the little shad out of the water was a gar, and there were several of them about. To finish up, we started at one end of the dam and floated along throwing in some minnows. Finally c2 got a hit and pulled in a little bass, a little one but welcome company nevertheless. A few minutes later dad caught a freshwater drum. He croaked at us and we let him go. A couple of times on the water the sky opened up and dropped a downpour on us. Dad's little boat has a canopy on it so we were able to stand (or crouch) underneath and get some protection from the rain, but it was definitely the visual of the day to see the air thick with precipitation and the surface of the water turned into a layer of dancing spray.

This was a disgusting update on the abu ghraib b.s. It focuses on Taguba's account of the events but provides some believeable side sources, only a few of those anonymous. My favorite part is definitely the Top Gun-esque moment with Rummy and Taguba in the locker room. I can't help but envision Rummy head back, popping his gum in Taguba's face. "The plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies room." And I'd never heard of the terrible video they mention... all in all some lovely information, just great. Fuck! Of course those wonderful New Yorker cartoons definitely live up to their vacuous reputation. If comedy was beer they'd be piss warm chango.

I finished that last Vonnegut book I was talking about, Slapstick. There were plenty of amusing little ideas in the storyline but it ends really sloppily and nonsensically. It's a fairly unconventional story overall and just sort of comes apart after the main body is spent. Still, there's some great examples of his dry imagination buried throughout Slapstick, but the other two novels I discussed earlier were a little better.

I can't help but add one more Top Gun quote:

Slider: Goose, who's butt did you kiss to get in here anyway?

Goose: The list is long, but distinguished.

Slider: Yeah, well so is my Johnson.

from the vonnegut

I finished Bluebeard today, and it occurred to me that in my last post I may have given it, as well as Jailbird, somewhat too short a shrift (interesting etymology there). I wanted to go on record as saying that they are fine examples of Vonnegut’s style and skill. He always emphasizes the (sad) beauty in life that even a cynic can enjoy, which is probably why his books appeal to me so much. I’m about to start Slapstick, the last (and most officially autobiographical, if that makes any sense) of the three old Vonnegut novels I picked up from a garage sale a few weeks back. After that I’ll probably try to kill the two Anne Rice books I bought on the same occasion – Pandora and Vittorio the Vampire. I'm not staking any claims about their quality, but I've enjoyed one or two of her works before. Still, it's very possible she's completely sucked the genre dry at this point.

I had a pint of draft Live Oak at Papadeaux's the other day. I've had it before but couldn't remember the taste. I'm almost positive it was the pale ale. To me it tasted like a slightly weak Newcastle, which I guess is a good thing.

The very end of the Wire Season 1 finale was awesome. Fuckin' Omar!

What's the word, turd?

I went to a tournament at Battleforge Games last weekend. There's a write up on my 40kology blog.

Books: I recently finished Imperial Life in the Emerald City, an inside look at Bremer's coalition provisional authority that set up in a big palace in Baghdad's green zone at the beginning of the occupation and proceeded to spend buttloads of money while accomplishing next to jack shit and many times making the situation worse. It was shocking, depressing, etcetera. A blissfully naive effort to create an insta capitalist democracy in what sounds like a backwards, corrupt(ed) dump. Oh well, launch all zigs. For great justice. Thereafter I read Vonnegut's Jailbird, which was good, but not especially funny or memorable. Now I'm reading Bluebeard which so far feels about the same. Both are told from first-person, both are loaded with coincidence and irony, and both feature playful little digs at different elements in American culture. Labor and economics in Jailbird, art and literature in Bluebeard. At least, that's my early take.

Movies: It's been a while since I reviewed any movies, let me play catch-up here and spin a few quick ones:

Daria: Is It Fall Yet? - Lame. I netflixed it for some goddamn reason, forgetting that we'd actually watched it already. It wasn't any better the secondtime around.

Flags of Our Fathers - OK, but it's no das Boot.

Land of the Dead - Decent, definitely in the idiom of his earlier movies (e.g. Day of the Dead). Some interesting innovations in zombie mythos.

Pan's Labyrinth - Meh. What was with all the big hoopla about this one?

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days - Definitely worth watching, depressing but very tense and dramatic.

28 Weeks Later - OK sequel to my current favorite zombie movie. Very violent, sometimes a little too extreme for extreme's sake.

Smokin' Aces - Meh. Who shot what now?

TV: Lost had the best 2007 season finale, hands down. Can't wait for the next season to begin. Heroes wrapped up fairly nicely, maybe a tad anticlimatic. The Shield and The Riches final episodes were both kinda lame, nothing really revelatory or cliffhangery. My current netflixed HBO series is The Wire. I'm nearing the end of the first season and it is fucking great. I can't believe the person that just got shot just got shot! Fuck!

Beer: Real Ale keeps me coming back for more Rio Blanco Pale Ale and Fireman's #4. Damn!

Fish: We picked up a couple new Oscars, very little but already showing the same kind of bossy, fearless personality as their predecessor. Behold, Romulus and Remus.