Category: Roommates

Sin City

April 1, 2005 /

Yeah, I saw it already, because I’m better than you.

And I gotta tell you… man, there’s a great movie in that footage, but that wasn’t it. It was a decent movie, an extraordinarily pretty one, and resolutely faithful to the original (as everyone’s pointed out). Cut all the voice-over monologues, I mean all of them, and you’d have a good movie. Cut the length of every shot in half, shrink Michael Madsen’s speaking parts (why, Michael, why? He sounded, as Maria pointed out, like community theatre), lose the stiff wire work and actually put the music from the trailers on the soundtrack–then you’d have a fucking magnificent balls-out bug-eyed noir-fu motion picture. I would watch that movie every night.

I hope there’s a director’s cut, or an editor’s cut, or a pirate renegade interweb cut, or something; I don’t think I’ve seen anything that needed it worse. Last night people were giggling when they should have been gasping, and all it would take to fix that would be a sharp knife and time.

March 1, 2005 /

I like movies. Sometimes, I hate movies, because I realize that hundreds of people spent a year of their lives each, along with tens of millions of dollars, making Son of the Mask. But I really do like them in general, even the kind of movies that wins Oscars. If I was in high school and Mr. Munson took two days out of Multicultural Literature (it was a great class, title notwithstanding) to have us watch Hotel Rwanda, I would be moved by it. I would tell my friends about it and do research to find out more about the situation. I would value the experience.

But if I’m sitting at home with nothing to do and I’m like “hey, let’s rent or go to a movie,” there’s no way I’m going to pick Hotel Rwanda. I just don’t hate myself that much. As a result, I never watch great movies and David Clark embarrasses me in Team Movie Pong.

Since my solution to many of my personal flaws is rigorous scheduling, here’s my idea: Sad And Happy Movie Day. Maybe one or two Saturdays a month, I’d get together with other humans (assuming I could trick anybody else into it) and two movies. One would be a great, depressing film about human nature, like Hotel Rwanda or Dancer in the Dark* or Boys Don’t Cry or The Mission. The other would be a goofy big-Hollywood popcorn flick, like Ocean’s Twelve or The Scorpion King. Maybe something chop-socky like Ong Bak, or something happy-indie like Garden State. Maybe Hackers, the foremost cinematic achievement of all time.

We would watch the sad movie first, and sit there slumped over, realizing that all human hope is a doomed, brief match-flare against the endless dark. We’d take a half-hour break to make popcorn and go get some Sourpatch Kids. We’d walk it off a little. Then we’d pop in the happy movie, laugh and ooh, karate-chop the couch and go home feeling generally not suicidal.

This is not something I will likely start soon, and if it does start I probably wouldn’t be able to host it myself. Still, would anybody else be up for it?

* Actually I am immune to Dancer in the Dark now, thanks to Jon, but I can still inflict it on other people.

John and Jon

January 19, 2005 /

I finally convinced one of my relatives to get a blog! My uncle John, about whom I’ve written before, has already started things off on the right foot with a post about how bad for you blogging can be. I wholly support this!

I’m hosting somebody else’s blog now! This makes me really excited!

Well, actually I host two: Jon, King of Former Roommates, started his songwriting journal back in December and then forgot about it. You’re fired, Brasfield! Hand over your badge!

I should go ahead and make the co-opted Crummy Standing Offer here: If you are part of my family (and this includes more than just my relatives) and you want a place to keep a journal, I will gladly host you.

December 29, 2004 /

In addition to Caitlan’s car, which (after its acrobatics last Wednesday) is totalled, Ian’s car is now a danger to drive; he’ll probably have to sell it for parts. Regarding Mom’s van, the mechanic told her to keep driving it for what time it had left, then leave it wherever it broke down.

Jon and Amanda, on their way to Tennessee for Christmas, skidded on ice and ran head-on into a truck. They’re okay, but the car is gone, and Amanda’s collarbone is broken.

It has been a bad December for cars, and for my family; but I am shaken by how much worse it could have been.

A year ago I was writing about the earthquake in Bam. I thought an earthquake death toll of around 50,000 was the worst I’d see in my lifetime. I was wrong, of course.

Update 2330 hrs: And my grandparents flipped their truck on ice on their way to Florida for Christmas. They are also miraculously okay, and also currently without transportation.

Parasitology and Mycopathology

December 17, 2004 /

Reasons Not To Help A Med Student Study

The pictures

December 8, 2004 /

Leonard says that it was in fact Zappa, and offers further quotage:

“In every language, the first word after ‘Mama!’ that every kid learns to say is ‘Mine!’ A system that doesn’t allow ownership, that doesn’t allow you to say ‘Mine!’ when you grow up, has — to put it mildly — a fatal design flaw.”

Maria notes that in fact it’s usually more like “no,” then “mine,” then “mama.” I think that only makes the quote more interesting, as does the fact that it relates not at all to free culture, and very well to the MPAA/RIAA model of purchasing and licensing. To quote Leonard himself, “‘own’ ‘it’ ‘on’ ‘DVD!'”

Requisite Boring Domestic Post

November 11, 2004 /

There’s this black stuff on a good long strip of the caulk around my tub, where it meets the tile walls. It is considerably stronger and smarter than me, and it never goes away. The last time it got this bad, I had to call building maintenance to have them strip up the caulk and put down new stuff; it was clean for a couple weeks, and then the black stuff started growing back.

This time, not wanting to be the guy who calls maintenance for every little problem, I took Maria’s offer of assistance and tried other solutions. We bought big strong scrub brushes. We used new and stronger kinds of tub cleaner. We tried a bleach-water solution. As a penultimate resort, we bought an evil yellow jug of ammonia, the only stuff that is guaranteed by science to kill mold and mildew.

Earlier today, I filled the tub with four gallons of hot water and two cups of pure toxic irritant and attacked it for an hour. I got almost all the tub and tile bright and clean, but the black stuff, untouched, just laughed at me with its thousands of tiny mouths.

I called maintenance. Everything tastes like ammonia now.

November 8, 2004 /

Twenty-four hours ago at this time, I was still talking about the fact that I’d seen Bobby McFerrin and Savion Glover perform, live. Today, at this time, I own Halo 2.

I’d like to have Lisa, Flora, Allison and especially Ken (who turned me on to Halo in the first place) to play the latter with me; I don’t, as they are casualties of my own private diaspora. But I had Maria to go to the show with me, and DC to encounter there. I’ll have the Thursday Night Grandkids to kick my butt at Halo.

Sometimes I feel bad about marking time in my life by video games and concerts, but there are worse ways to do so.

October 14, 2004 /

Number of “canon” animated Disney movies: 44

Of those, movies where the protagonist’s mom is not dead:

The Lion King
101 Dalmations
The Aristocats
…?

Update 10.15.2004 0823 hrs: Ben points out that Pinocchio should count too, since his mom (the Blue Fairy) isn’t exactly dead.

Update 10.15.2004 1402 hrs: And Maria makes the case for Fantasia, citing that “in the Greek Myth segment, the Mommy Pegasus is totally still alive.” Okay, guys, but you’re reaching here. Let’s just face up to the fact that Disney hates all moms, including yours, and definitely mine.