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

Flotsam; Jetsam

Recent movies:

Iron Man - Three stars. It was a decent comic book flick made that much better by Robert Downey Jr. He's made for some spectacular characters over the years... Weird Science, Wonder Boys, Natural Born Killers, A Scanner Darkly, Tropic Thunder... Also Gwenny P is pretty good in this too. Still don't get why they aren't bringing back Terrence Howard for the sequel, but replacing him with Don Cheadle makes it hard to complain too much. I do have to warn you that there is some gratuitious CGI that normally I would have to bitch about, but it wasn't the worst I've seen by a long shot. I watched I Am Legend again on HBO the other day and I had forgotten how that one was so effectively ruined by the video toaster infected. Costumes and makeup ftw.

The Happening - Poop stars. Sweet baby jesus, what a mindfuck. I'm not talking about twists or suspense, rather the sheer hair-pulling insanity of how bad it is. How did this movie get made? I guess it's just a force of nature that we'll never understand. P.S. That's this movie's mantra, and I've never heard a more ignorant wussy copout on science, hopefully only made for the sake of propping up the gimpy and incongruous plot. The score is cool, I guess. It's just too bad this movie had to "happen" to Wahlberg, Leguizamo, and Deschanel. The last 30 minutes, starting when Wahlberg's little group, including the two teen boys, arrives at the shuttered up house, are especially wrenching. Damn M Night! Wha happen?

The Man in The Sand - Three stars. Entertaining doc on the forces behind Mermaid Avenue. I came away liking Bragg's solo stuff much more than I have in the past, and Wilco came away looking a mite prickish. Whatever. It's all great music.

A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake - Three stars. Amazing that there's absolutely no video footage of this guy. A depressing story but it was pretty revealing to see the tragic persona behind his great songs. His sister is such a ham though, I gotta say. Hameriffic. Hamerabi. Hamon Ayala.

Tenacious D in The Pick Of Destiny - Three stars. The beginning was slow but it picked up in the end. Eh? Picked up? Eh? I was laughing out loud during the final rock-off with the devil.

Rumsfeld Responsible for Torture, Report Says - I know it was you, McCain. And it breaks my heart.

I got caught up on the third (current) season of 30 Rock. They've all been pretty funny so far, especially the reunion episode. Also sad to see Amy Poehler is leaving SNL. I saw her in person in an Upright Citizens Brigade show at Bad Dog a long time ago! Holla!

Flotsam; Jetsam

Whoahohaoh! Shell shocked

Don't want no abba zabba

Yeah, but could they install a sensor-mounted exterior house light? I think not

Unnatural... riiiight

Watched a few movies lately:

Quantum of Solace: 2 1/2 stars. Casino Royale was more fun. Fields was pretty hot stuff, better than the ukranian commie apologist anyway.

Sleepaway Camp: 4 stars. I'd classify this as a must-see. Terrible 80's horror flick with way too much 80's cockbulge and manriff. But seriously, see this movie. The ending, oh lord.

Darkon: 3 1/2 stars. A documentary on a fantasy role playing group in Baltimore with lots of nerds making alter-ego power plays on the weekends. Some carry over aspects of their personality, some do not. Crazy.

April Fools: Poop stars. We couldn't make it through the first 30 minutes of this lame handicam nonsense. Meh, begone from my queue ye fowl ting.

Get out of my life!

damn this looks fucking awesome.

Meanderings Film Review Team

I wanted to catalog all my various movie reviews from meanderings gone by. Unfortunately I don't have them specifically indexed, so you have to just scroll down a bit to find the right entry on the directed page. Here's all the ones still currently up on the nets; hopefully I'll have time to get some older ones together soon and add them.

The 40-Year Old Virgin
300
Aeon Flux
Anaconda
A Prairie Home Companion
The Aristocrats
Batman Begins
Bend it like Beckham
Block Party
Borat: Cultural learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazahkstan
Brick
Broken Flowers
Cabin Fever
Capote
Carandiru
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cherish
Children of Men
The Chumscrubber
Clerks 2
Corpse Bride
Crash
Dig!
The Departed
The Descent
Doom
Elf
Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex
The Girl Next Door
The Good Shephard
Hidalgo
A History of Violence
House of 1000 Corpses
Hustle and Flow
The Ice Harvest
An Inconvenient Truth
The Incredibles
The Island
Jesus’ Son
Jesus is Magic
Kingdom of Heaven
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Kung Fu Hustle
Lady in the Water
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Lucky Number Slevin
The Machinist
Mannequin
The Man Who Copied
March of the Penguins
The Matador
Memoirs of a Geisha
Miami Vice
Munich
Murderball
Nacho Libre
National Treasure
Oceans 12
The Prestige
Ray
Rivers and Tides
Rockers
A Scanner Darkly
Serenity
Sexy Beast
Sideways
Sin City
The Squid and the Whale
Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith
Stop Making Sense
Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest
Superman Returns
Syriana
Talladega Nights
Thumbsucker
Troy
Ultraviolet
Underworld : Evolution
V for Vendetta
Walk the Line
Wedding Crashers
X3: The Last Stand

Stormy High

I read about Black Mountain's 2008 full-length In the Future in an early review of the Sword's second record Gods of the Earth. Can't wait for the new Sword (April 1) but Future is definitely going to keep me busy until then. Black Mountain reminds me of Black Angels, Kyuss, Heart, that kind of psychedelic rock stuff, but with their own uniquely pleasing flavor. They have standard sort of songs mixed in with what I can only describe as jammy rock epics. There are one or two slightly repetitive songs, namely "Bright Lights" and, to a lesser degree, "Stormy High," but the great tracks like "Wucan" (love that main riff), "Tyrants," "Queens Will Play," and "Stay Free" easily make up for them. They are playing at the free day show on Saturday at Waterloo Park with the Breeders. I'm probably going to try and make that one.

A really amazing movie came on Starz today, absolutely stupendous. Bon Cop, Bad Cop. A half-price Michael Bay-style cop flick featuring your standard "odd couple" formula, i.e., 2 smart-ass detectives partnered up against their wills so that one of them gets a little dirt on their shoes and the other can avoid suspension for his propensity to cause havoc. After an initial adjustment period, the two bond and work together, each in their own particular "idiom," to stop a psychotic madman from hatching a ridiculous scheme. The main twist: these cops are Canadian - one a hard-bitten Quebecky frog, the other an L7 Ontarian (played by Lord Marshal from Chronicles of Riddick). The square parleys fluent French, the bruiser speaks English only passably, and the movie goes back and forth between both languages so frequently and smoothly it starts to feel like you've got a babelfish in your ear. And that's just the premise. The actual execution of this movie is surpassingly ridiculous, and it just gets better and sillier as it goes along. Guffaw to death. I can imagine this might not appeal to everyone's sense of humor but if you're at all intrigued at least give it a netflix. And when you get to the scene of the mascot in the mirror, you'll call me and thank me. Or curse me.

Hack 'Em Up

Speaking of the party, someone, I think it was Will, mentioned how hacky the latest 30 Rock episode had been. I watched it, and maybe I'm slightly biased towards humor centered around Deutscher Übersetzungsfehler, but I thought it was great. OK, Tracy Morgan's singing voice in "Midnight Train to Georgia" was awfully difficult to take at points, but maybe someone simply owed Gladys Knight a gimme cameo. Come on, a "do-do" joke followed up by a self high-five? That's gold, son.

I knocked out the first season of Dexter this week, using teh streaming Netflix. At first some of the cliché supporting characters really turned me off (either the acting or the dialogue, I'm not sure which), but by the end the tension and plot twists had me hooked. Now that I think about it, it was a lot like Dead Like Me and Weeds in that they all have this sort of cheesy veneer, but underneath is a darkness that allows sympathy for even the most absurd archetypes.
I'll definitely watch the second season; hopefully, the chilly final episode means a little less hamfisting for a while.

Another of my recent watched-it-thens was a collection of 2008 Comedy Sundance Shorts. Some were better than others, but they were all worth checking out. Except the second one.

A summary:

• "A Relationship in Four Days" - A bath of new york hipster love. Makes your teeth hurt. I didn't not enjoy it.


• "By Modern Measure" - Didn't really get this one, or like it at all really.


• "Farewell Packets of Ten" - Ohhh cigarettes. Three minutes with two old yellow-lipped irish ladies chain-smoking and talking about smoking that goes from lovingly nostalgic to sadly grotesque.


• "FCU: Fact Checkers Unit" - Probably the outright chuckliest. Is that a word? It is now. But such a young, admittedly unproven word probably doesn't do this one justice. Hilarious, more specifically, Bill Murray singing along with chopsticks hilarious.


• "Motion Studies: Inertia" - Funny and pretty simple.


• "Sick Sex" - Also funny.


• "The Funeral" - My second favorite. Fucking "Crossroads!" I do love me a good inappropriate hip hop cover.

We also saw Sicko the other day, fairly depressing but not all that shocking. Doom doom doom goes the big ass drum...

Batman Begins has been on FX all week, and I watched it for the second time in bits and pieces mixed in between the great tennis going on at the Austrialian Open. Chokeavich, you can't handle the Fed. Get a grip, as it were. And commentators: if I have to hear the same stupid anecdote about Vitchavitch and his ace brother in a future Davis Cup team I'm going to vomit. We got it. Cute the first time. Enough. Anyway - Begins has me all worked up for Dark Knight. Really too bad about Heath, but at least it looks in the preview like he did a good job as the Joker. In any case, we'll always have "I Love You Baby." They really should have had him rehash that in Brokeback.

Got that Greenhouse Gas

We watched 3:10 to Yuma last night. Overall the movie was about a 3 out of 5. The acting, scenery, and action scenes were great but some of the character motivations were a little hard to buy. Bale and Crowe both did a great job, and there were some amusing cameos I wasn't expecting.

I've been devouring the fourth season of The Wire, just an incredible show that gets better with every episode. The stories are so delicious, with awesome sets and scores of addictive characters. All their personal dramas are more amateur and realistic than cliché and gravy boat dramatic (as seen in the nevertheless classic Yawn and Order series). This season you get close up with Marlow's main muscle Snoop and Chris (I fucking love the way those two talk), the mayoral candidate Carcetti, as well as a shitload of more great Omar adventures. Tony told me the first episode of the currently airing final fifth season was excellent and I can't wait to finish up with the fourth and start down the long road into the sunset. It's really too bad it's ending; at least we got as many seasons as we did.

I watched some of Showtime's Dexter, a fairly enjoyable show. Every once in a while it seems too much like a hardcore premium cable variant of Monk, but I did find myself wanting to watch more after finishing the first two episodes. Netflix got me hooked with the watch-it-now and then all of a sudden it was unavailable for further viewing. I have to admit I'm probably too lazy and backlogged to actually rent it for watching on the TV, but maybe that says something about the actual quality of the program, too.

Ketchup

Last weekend we tried out the Tilted Kilt way up north of mopac. It's essentially the same as Lion and the Rose in San Antonio: a british pub-themed Hooters. They do have a better beer selection than the Hoots, I'll give em that. The food was so-so. I had a couple pints of Stella and a fish sandwich; c2 had a "irish dip," which was their version of a french dip roast beef sandwich. Both meals were decent, and I especially liked the fries. The service was a little dippy. It would probably be a fun place to watch a game if it wasn't so goddamn loud inside. Still, I might go back.

No Country For Old Men was awesome. Pretty fucking cold balls but awesome. Will had already seen it a couple weeks prior but went with me to see it again. I get now why he was so eager to watch the movie a second time. Very suspenseful with great black humor dialogue. Chigurh is one of my favorite bad guys now. Thankfully I had totally forgotten that Josh Brolin was Brent in Goonies or else I might not have taken him so seriously. Don't let anyone give away the ending for you!

Mr. Brooks was definitely head and shoulders below No Country, but I still think it had its merits. Pretty much every scene with Costner, Cook, and Hurt together is great - the alter ego gimmick worked for me - everything else is terrible. The entire sideline plot around Demi Moore's character tracking Brooks down is worthless.

Hmm what else? I threw +2 on the 9 hole at Wells Branch the other day, beating my personal best of +4. That was pretty sweet.

Oh yeah, I finally got The Orange Box, and it's as great a set of games as I was expecting. I already beat Portal, a neat little game centered around one of my all-time secret wish fantasy toys: the portable hole. It's essentially a first-person puzzler with great graphics and the same creepy, quiet atmosphere as games like Myst or the original Half Life. A great title. Teamfortress 2, however, is a fucking masterpiece. TF2 is probably one of the most perfect computer games I have ever played. The graphics are cool and the mechanics are very smooth. Obviously you need an internet connection and a worthwhile server, but there's always tons of them to choose from. All the classes are equally fun, some more challenging than others. I don't think I'll ever be a very good spy or sniper, but I'm decent with the heavy, engineer, pyro, and medic classes. It's so fun to set up those sentry guns that you just want to cry.

Mehdiocre Movies

I've watched my fair share of blase flicks recently. I can't wait for No Country at the end of the month to pull me back out of this shitty movie tarpit into which I've apparently wandered.

First was Wes Anderson's disappointing The Darjeeling Limited and the accompanying short film Hotel Chevalier. Usually I'm a huge fan of Anderson's work but this one just didn't keep me interested and dragged on a bit much. All his classic touches and affectations were there but they felt a little heavy for a travelling film; the characters were all carrying around literally too much baggage and they often bottomed out in not very interesting ways. Honestly the burnt out archetypes were served up better in Life Aquatic and Tenenbaums.

I rented The Battle for Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri) but I couldn't get too deep into it and stopped watching early on. I'm going to try to rent it again; it may have just been a bad week for that kind of movie.

Saw III was atrocious, just like I figured it would be. Honestly I'm very much over the whole torture porn genre - this was the old lady's pick. Some of the gimmicks are pretty clever, but you can see everything coming a mile away, and it's basically 113 minutes of gratuitious suffering that just sucks the soul right out of you. Blegh.

We watched Death Proof over a couple of nights, as it too drags on with contrived dialogue and pointless time-suck scenes. I can kind of appreciate the whole homage to shitty 70's B-movies paradigm, but I thought his earlier movies did a much better job of this, not to mention they were actually interesting films in themselves. WTF happened to the cheerleader actress, the superfine Mary Liz Winstead, who looks just like the similarly superfine Jewel Staite? Maybe my issues with Death Proof mean I couldn't appreciate the whole ironic concept of the film, but I was just expecting more fun overall. Still, there were definitely highlights. #1 Bad Ass Kurt Russell and the everpresent smoking hot chicks swinging around help you survive the overlong hangout scenes and stilted dialogue. The ending is awesome yet completely unsatisfying. What?! I know. It just is. I heard this was the better of the two Grindhouse movies, but I can't see how much worse any Rodriguez movie could be, especially with the whole McGowan gun-leg thing going for it.

Last but not least we watched 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Oh, and that's Fantastic 4 by the way; I'm guessing the title is like a hip abbreviated KFC kinda thing? Anyways. Super cheesy, gag-worthy digital effects (especially Mr. Fantastic), and pretty much nothing going for it outside of the second movie to feature Dr. Doom, who will always be one of my favorite Marvel characters ever.

Born on the Bayou

I went with pops to Cedar Bayou this weekend, via Goose Island State Park. Roughly the latlong is 28.071130 N, -96.84465 W. We took a boat from the ramp there across Copano Bay towards San Jose Island, taking a left at the ICC, up to Mesquite Bay, then into the bayou, almost all the way to the outflow into the gulf. We parked the boat, picked up some mullet with a throw-net, and wade-fished the surf on the gulf side for an hour or two. Pretty rough waves but otherwise very comfortable. We didn't get any bites, but there was plenty of seaweed getting caught on the lines and, thankfully, no stingray encounters. The actual bayou itself appeared to be somewhat plugged up with grass and debris. Human modifications on the flow regimes of our rivers in Texas appear to be affecting the natural passes through the texas barrier islands - important refuges and nurseries for fish and other animal species. Here's a relevant article from Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

We went back to the boat and drove back out to the mouth at Mesquite Bay to wade the oysterbay and throw artificials for a half hour as the sun went down. No fish caught there, either. Just as we were leaving, we spotted some porpoises circling some baitfish in the shallow water, slapping their tails and splashing around. We got back to the beach just after dark, and as we unloaded some overnight gear, the mosquitoes commenced their attack. We set up a tarp on the gulf-side beach in the stronger wind, set out some pads, and tried to catch some z's. Unfortunately, from time to time the wind died down and enough skeeters got through to start a blood bank; I'm covered with bites pretty much head to toe. Still, if I hadn't been woken up so many times by the shitty little bugs I might have missed the big family of peccaries that came through, squealing and snorting when we startled them. Apparently the resident coyote came by as well but I somehow managed to sleep through that.

Around five, the Off ran out and we booked it for the boat, driving out to the bay to idle around until the sun came up. The tide had gone out and several times we had to wade around in the darkness in order to find a deep enough channel to run the motor and get out. Back at the Mesquite Bay mouth we threw some more lures in the water trying one last time to catch a red or speck to no avail. The sun came up and created these two large blue beams in the sky and luckily they came out in my picture (below). There was noone else on the bay but the birds, including some ibis, herons, spoonbills, pelicans, frigates, and terns.

We headed back to Goose Island and drove back home, tired and empty handed but still happy with the experience. It's an awesome place and I hope to return with better luck fishing next time.

Me and c2 watched Animal Factory the other day. C2 was so-so about it, I thought it was great. It's a prison movie written by Eddie Bunker, directed by Steve Buscemi, starring Eddie Furlong, Willem Dafoe, Danny Trejo, Mickey Rourke, Tom Arnold, and Jake La Botz. There were also a couple of Wire actors in there too. Obviously being a prison tale it was stark and depressing, but pretty interesting overall with good acting and a suspenseful plot.

This bathroom stall foot tapping whathaveyou is kinda funny.

We played a round of discgolf again on saturday. I scored +7 and c2 got +11. Bad maybe but we're getting better.

You say they were pacing on a ferry? Never heard of such a thing. They probably just didn't know about the cardio gym on the second deck. They could have gotten much more beneficial exercise up there.

Par for the course

Played some frisbee golf this weekend. My impeccable form:



And that of my brother:



We watched The Fountain yesterday and it was terrible. I'm almost done with season 3 of The Wire and it just keeps getting better and better. Brother Mazone just rolled back into town, looking to finish business with Omar. Ah shit, it's going to be good.

Still playing a lot of Day of Defeat and looking to probably get Company of Heroes in the next couple of months. DOW: Dark Crusade is awesome but the single player campaign system is pretty grueling. I was amazed the other day with the power of a quickly built, mass imperial guard infantry army. With a command squad distracting their HQs space marines and chaos can be fairly easily overwhelmed if they haven't yet built up vehicles or dreadnoughts.

The Vick bust has come full circle. I feel slightly conflicted about the deal, honestly, because while I feel justified in thinking some douche that kills dogs for sport should go away for a long time, I can't help also feeling a bit raw that the media is in complete control of my judgement from the arrest to the plea bargain. Emotional manipulation, call it. What the fuck do I really know about this guy, his buddies, and the whole shebang? Meh.

I Heard Transformers Sucks Ass

Yeah. From a couple of different sources. And they didn't completely shit on it either, but the things they didn't like about made it sound like exactly the kind of movie I don't want to pay to see. So, I hereby pre-meh Transformers.

We watched Nightwatch over the last couple of evenings, and it was a real mess. Like a confused Russian Underworld. Nonetheless I will still try to rent the sequel, which the director says will be significantly different in speed and style. There were maybe a few interesting elements lost in the mix but overall the first of this apparent trilogy was disappointing.

I've tried a couple new restaurants in the past 2 weeks or so. Me and c2 went to North By Northwest (or NXNW to you, broham) in the middle of the week. It wasn't anything special. Tries really hard to be fancy. The crowd was lame, too: split down the middle between skinny, faceless Austin chickadees and the rotating cast of all the old Bill Brasky skits on SNL. If you like to eat at places that specialize in things like pan-laminated pork castles and basil-elucidated fish nard ambrosia, then you'd probably love this place. I had the cobb salad and it was ok, c2 tried the pasta fazool (or something, I don't remember the name), and it had an overly sweet tomato-onion cream sauce that got real old real fast. I had their "Northern Light" (beer!) and it was a light beer, nothing more, nothing less. I expect I'd try the rest of their line if someone else was paying, but I don't really feel like going back so it probably won't ever happen.

I also ate at Moe's Southwest Grill. Had a chicken club quesadilla and it was mighty fine. Queso was thick and tasty. All in all very satisfactory for a decent price; I'll go back.

Fourteen Oh! Eight and Others

After hearing a few good reviews we went to see 1408 this weekend. It was pretty decent, with tons of really creepy shit, but the beginning and end were both really slow and cheesy. I can't wait to stay in a hotel again, just for the inevitable flashbacks of all the strange imagery this movie has sunk into my mind.

Finished the first season of Entourage, fuckin awesome. Great characters and plenty of hilarious cameos. Each episode is a short little treat of dirty hollywood b.s. skewered for my amusement.

Also saw Apocalypto, which was much better than I expected. It was pretty damn violent, disturbing like Braveheart on speed. I looked around online to get a feel for how accurate it really was, but there seems to be points of view from both sides (on the internet... imagine that!). Some elements from the film were no doubt creatively intuited (to have actually happened in Mayan culture), and the historical timeline was something of a mishmash, but it really doesn't change my opinion of the movie. I thought the costumes, scenery, and acting were spectacular, but a couple of the plot elements were a tad trite.