Do yourself a favor and read this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/weekinreview/23jamieson.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tick
Classic.
Then, sit down, make sure the door to your office is closed, and watch this.
http://www.heavy.com/video/61396
Funniest thing I have ever seen.
My friends and I have been joking about the all-ugiest NBA team for years. You know, Sam Cassel, Chris Kaman, Adam "Trash Stash" Morris, Joakim Noah, and of course Andrei "I look just like the bad guy from the end of Ghostbusters/Annie Lennox/Kurt Warner's buttnasty wife" Kirilenko. 
Turns out my favorite of the bunch, Chris Kaman, has been misdiagnosed as ADHD. He's off his meds and working with a neurosurgeon to slow his brain down, and it's resulted in him having the best year of his NBA career, putting up almost epic numbers (he was one block short of a triple-double against the nexts on Saturday)
http://www.nba.com/clippers/news/kaman_espnotl_080115.html
Well, I'm happy for him ... but man, is he ugly.
Also, I think a couple of websites beat me to this all-ugly thing. But hey, that's a perfect example parallel invention, not copyright infringement. So sue me.
You have to check out SpeakeasyDC. They have me featured in their new ad, and the next SpeakEasy is next Tuesday, which coincidentally is Veteran's Day (a federal holiday) so there should be a lot of stories about war and peace. Check it out.
My first kiss.
Gum it up. Aren't hipsters cute when they get all, like, inspired? DC has been different for the past few days. People are looking a little less depressed. Maybe that's the 70 degree weather. Maybe that's the free tacos they got during the world series. Maybe it's Hope. Maybe it's indie prog punk electro screamo experimento rock. Maybe I'm just projecting. http://stereogum.com/
In other news, Rick Astley won "Best Act Ever" at the MTV Europe Awards.
Currently reading: This is Your Brain On Music
Currently listening to: That catchy MGMT song. You know the one. Don't make me hum it.
Currently anticipating: Paintballing tomorrow.
Currently hoping: PNC banks go bankrupt.
I was lucky enough to live in DC during the election of the first black president in our nation's history. This man can inspire me like no politician ever has. I hope he can knock this one out of the park for the next four years.
Some might feel it's gross or inappropriate, or just not care, but I wanted to say that I love Narda Leila Ipakchi, and I'm lucky to have her in my life. She's amazing. It might be cheesy - but I'm just being honest.
I’ve only seen my father drunk twice. The first time, we were at the beach for Thanksgiving, and all of my siblings were there, and my dad got horribly, horribly drunk. He had his big shirt unbuttoned down to his chest, like, “no, senior please, it is too sexy …” except it wasn’t … and his fathead was so red, and so big, it was a little scary. I thought he might burst like a steampipe. And my dad – my sober, thoughtful, strict, southern Methodist father, with his baritone preacher’s voice and southern drawl – started singing, in a low, deep rumble, a song from Porgy and Bess. “Myyyyyyyyyyyyyy … woman Bessie ………. Oh myyyyyyyyyyyy woman Bessie.”
Up until that time, I hadn't known my father had ever seen Porgy and Bess. Or any musical, for that matter. Much less one about the life of people living on Catfish Row in South Carolina the 20s. Oh man, his head was so fat.
The second time was at my graduation party. I was headed to grad school at Tulane, and he already knew I was going to be doing a bit of drinking in college, so he let my mom get a keg – a keg! – my conservative, southern father let us have a keg of Guiness, and he proceeded to get mighty drunk off of it. When the party died down, I told him I was going to take off to visit a friend at a local diner – and he looked up at me, shirt half undone again, and said, “you’re not going anywhere, you little jerk.” When my brother tried to tell him it was ok, he said, “NO! you’re not going, you flatbellied piss-ant.” And then he passed out and I went and had an omlette.
So in college, last day of school, sophomore year, my mom called me, and with two words, changed my life forever. I could tell she had been crying, and when I asked what was wrong she said, simply,
“Dad’s dead.”
It was a heart attack, at work, 9:30 am, as he rushed to a meeting. No one could have predicted that. At the funeral, I spoke about a dream I had about him, and all my siblings talked too about the articles he’d written about them and how much they loved him. The next four months of the summer were pretty much a daze. It’s been more than six years since he died, and I still think about it, and cry about it, and dream about it, all the time. I wish he were here so I could tell him all about my life – so I could ask his advice about the woman that I love – so I could watch a Michigan football game with him on a lazy October Saturday and hear him softly snoring in the chair next to me. I wish I could hear him yell “hot damn,” when they scored, just one last time.
And it’s funny, my dad did a lot of really great things in his life, but the times that I keep remembering were the two times I ever saw him drunk. We sit around and talk about it and laugh and joke, and my mom gets so angry. She yells at us, “That’s not the person your dad was, he was a great man. He was a sober man, and an honest man.” But I don’t know, for some reason, those drunken, crazy times are the ones I remember – him at his most vulnerable, most funny – and most human.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. “Myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy woman Bessie. Oh myyyyyyyyyyy woman Bessie.”
I miss you, dad.
Yeah, I have a girlfriend, and it's crazy, but I think I'm in love with her - after less than three months. You never expect that stuff to happen, and then boom, it does, and you're just floored. I'm not sure I've even fully digested it yet.
We went to New Orleans last week and it was so surreal; we got there on Thursday, with limited power, most businesses closing at 5 or 6 pm, and water in short supply. We rented a car and drove around and saw the city recovery, national guard troops, and police everywhere (even New Orleans has joined the annoying trend of Police Cars with permenant flashing lights, which I suppose was good in the darkness uptown).
We went down to the quarter the first night and hit up Port of Call, then went back uptown relatively early after a drink at Lafitte's blacksmith shop. Around 4 am we woke up thirsty and realized we hadn't bought any water, and so we went out looking for some - and much to our chagrin, or perhaps luck, nothing was open and the streets were empty because of a curfew (which in reality was only a walking curfew, thank god we had that car).
Anyway, we drove all around the empty quarter, the empty uptown, the blackened streets. Eventually we stopped at the Hotel La Pavillion and asked a couple of police officers if they knew of any place to get water and they gave us a dozen bottles out of the back of their truck. Surreal.
By Friday though, everything was business as usual. We even saw James Carville at Lilette's, and even Jacques Imos was back up on Saturday night.
The law school stuff is still in the embryonic stages, I haven't completed the apps yet - that's my goal for the next two weeks.
I'll post pictures soon.
these posts weren't working for awhile, but I'm hoping this test post will fix that.
Fourth of July party was incredible, check the book for pics.
It's been months and months and months since I've worked up the energy to post anything here. Call me a slave to trends - I guess the blogging thing ran its course with me when my real job began and reality intruded. I have to get stuff done now, and that's serious.
The Wire's new season is about 5 episodes in, and although it started with such promise, it's dragging at this point, and I can see all the journalists' points - their criticism is ringing true to me. David Simon's crusade is bitter and angry - which I love - but so far lacks a little depth and realism. But I have faith he'll right the ship yet, I just want it to happen fast.
Daily "Wire" commentary on Slate.com ...
... and a great article on David Simon on The Atlantic Online.
Went ahead and bought David Simon's heralded book "Homicide" too, thought I could get to it after all of these Graham Greene books. Man, my eyes are always bigger than my stomach/time/energy. I guess that could be considered a good thing, I dunno.
I need to get back to work, but quickly -
The Shipwrecked, or England Made Me, was decent ... but raw, and the ending was unsatisfying. Not sure if Greene was trying to write the "pop" novel, but it moved too fast adn was too obviously a dig at Disney and other coporate men, without an ultimate message. It started off grand and just metered out.
The Man Within - his first novel ever - was idealistic and overwrought and melodramatic. But I'm still glad I read it - you can hear the 21-year-old Greene coming out through it, and it's comforting to know that the 21-year-old Greene was as much of a romantic fool as I was at that age (and maybe still am).
Back to work.
-J
The most recent genre of movies I took advantage of was westerns. I watched a bunch of the samauri films on the list below, and most of these, the ones I saw are in italics.
Top Rated "Western" Titles
Rank Rating Title Votes
1. 8.9 Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966) 74,653
2. 8.7 C'era una volta il West (1968) 38,266
3. 8.5 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) 18,699
4. 8.4 The Wind (1928) 1,173
5. 8.3 The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) 4,305
6. 8.3 High Noon (1952) 20,689
7. 8.2 Per qualche dollaro in più (1965) 21,043
8. 8.2 Unforgiven (1992) 54,618
9. 8.1 The Wild Bunch (1969) 18,514
10. 8.1 3:10 to Yuma (2007) 12,579
11. 8.1 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) 34,297
12. 8.0 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) 13,364
13. 8.0 The Searchers (1956) 17,814
14. 7.9 Per un pugno di dollari (1964) 19,918
15. 7.9 My Darling Clementine (1946) 4,437
16. 7.9 Rio Bravo (1959) 11,776
17. 7.9 Grande silenzio, Il (1968) 1,828
18. 7.9 Hud (1963) 4,315
19. 7.9 Red River (1948) 6,652
20. 7.9 Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) 4,149
21. 7.8 Stagecoach (1939) 8,868
22. 7.8 The Magnificent Seven (1960) 16,933
23. 7.8 Dances with Wolves (1990) 45,959
24. 7.8 Way Out West (1937) 1,706
25. 7.7 Destry Rides Again (1939) 2,567
26. 7.7 Winchester '73 (1950) 3,053
27. 7.7 Little Big Man (1970) 9,508
28. 7.7 Blazing Saddles (1974) 28,802
29. 7.7 The Gunfighter (1950) 1,776
30. 7.7 The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) 12,877
31. 7.7 3:10 to Yuma (1957) 1,702
32. 7.7 Shane (1953) 8,847
33. 7.7 The Mark of Zorro (1940) 1,898
34. 7.7 The Big Country (1958) 3,124
35. 7.6 Lonely Are the Brave (1962) 1,255
36. 7.6 Giant (1956) 7,343
37. 7.6 Giù la testa (1971) 4,419
38. 7.6 Fort Apache (1948) 3,382
39. 7.6 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) 9,469
40. 7.6 The Shootist (1976) 5,419
41. 7.6 Dead Man (1995) 18,937
42. 7.6 Viva Zapata! (1952) 1,555
43. 7.6 El Dorado (1966) 4,321
44. 7.5 Ride the High Country (1962) 2,870
45. 7.5 Tombstone (1993) 28,006
46. 7.5 Lone Star (1996) 11,132
47. 7.5 McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) 4,260
48. 7.5 High Plains Drifter (1973) 8,193
49. 7.5 Open Range (2003) 16,516
50. 7.5 The Proposition (2005) 9,405
Obviously, I've been doing mostly John Ford movies, with the occasional Spagetti western thrown in. NOTE: The movies in italian are spagetti westerns - the first being "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and the second being my all-time favorite, "Once Upon a Time in the West."
"My mother was a whore from Alamedia and the finest woman who ever lived. Whether for an hour or a month, my father must've been a happy man."
http://www.imdb.com/chart/western
A blog post is like an orgasm ... it's generally too long between them, and when too many come at once, you're overwhelmed and need a break, but when you get one and it's been awhile, it's really, really good, because you forgot how good they really are.
Huh? I gotta stop reading Phillip Roth and trying to use metaphors, I'm obviously no good at them, like a creative-writing teacher with too much vocabulary and metaphor rolling around in that empty head of theirs.
Again? Damn.
Reading: The Twenty-Seventh City
Finished: Huey P. Long
Listening To: The People Under the Stairs
Playing: Halo 3
Watching: Rio Grande
Quoting: Neil Gaiman. "Perfection is a horrible lover to have, because once you've had her, just ok or adequate or better than average is never good enough again."
Just wrapping up the book, and I dunno, I love it. I read the reviews - a lot say it's great because it's a rookie attempt, that it doesn't focus enough on the characters individually, but I love it because it's not about the characters - even though people need characters in order to function, or to listen to someone for 500+ pages - but it's about cities in the midwest, about gentrification and urban renewal and how fake it all is/was, about downtown Denver and the Detroit casinos and it does a wonderful job making the city a vital character.
The plot is a bit far-fetched and again, underdeveloped. But it's not really about the plot. It's about the city. And while it left me feeling unsatisfied, and a little worried about his other book, the one that didn't get good reviews, and which I've put on my list next, it was a great break after the 900+ pages of Huey P. Long. Biographies are tough, because they're real - I mean, it's not made up - and the people's lives are so damn interesting - great men always are - but there's just so much DETAIL, so much MINUTAE ... so many names and places and not enough concept. One reason I liked Rising Tide so much (apart from how engineering-heavy it was) was it brought everything together without making some sort of moral judgement, but it was written with a bit of flair and as an event, but without overdoing it (like Dyson's "Come Hell or High Water ... only so much hyperbole and plays-on-word for me.).
So I give it an A - in my book. Having read The Corrections first, it's hard to not find fault in any other work by Franzen, because you know he's capable of such an amazing book. It's like ... watching a Jordan come back after retirement. He would still score 12 points a game in the NBA, but it wasn't nearly the same, it was almost sad, after knowing what he once was capable of (only reverse that cronology ... because Franzen has obviously become more capable the older he's gotten ... and having 19 years to write The Corrections didn't hurt).
I also get the sense that the only parts of the Twenty-Seventh City that are really even slightly autobiographical are the parts about the high school and college students. Franzen was 26(?) when he wrote it, and he wouldn't really (emphasize REALLY - he does a pretty amazing job) know what was going on in these older people's heads.
That's why the Corrections was so great - you knew that, like Phillip Roth, he was revealing himself, in all his horrible flawed reality.
A-
Here is a list of Notable Samurai films, of which I'll be partaking in as many as possible as soon as I'm through my Netflix "Oscar-winning movies I've never seen" queue.
List of Notable Samurai Films
1949 The Quiet Duel - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1949 Jakoman and Tetsu - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi
1949 Stray Dog - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1950 Rashomon - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1951 Conclusion of Kojiro Sasaki-Duel at Ganryu Island directed by Hiroshi Inagaki - This was the first, but not the last, time that Toshiro Mifune played Musashi Miyamoto
1952 Vendetta for a Samurai - directed by Kazuo Mori
1954 Seven Samurai - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1954-56 Samurai Trilogy - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
1954 Musashi Miyamoto
1955 Duel at Ichijoji Temple
1956 Duel at Ganryu Island
1957 Throne of Blood aka Spider Web Castle - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1958 The Hidden Fortress - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1959 Samurai Saga - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
1960 The Gambling Samurai - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi
1961 Yojimbo aka The Bodyguard - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1962 Chushingura - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
1964 Three Outlaw Samurai
1964 Harakiri - directed by Masaki Kobayashi Won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival
1965 Samurai Assassin aka Samurai - directed by Kihachi Okamoto
1965 Red Beard - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1965 Sanshiro Sugata - directed by Seiichiro Uchikiro - this is a remake of Kurosawa's films Sanshiro Sugata and Sanshiro Sugata part 2
1966 The Sword of Doom - directed by Kihachi Okamoto
1966 The Adventure of Kigan Castle - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi
1967 Samurai Rebellion - directed by Masaki Kobayashi Rebellion won the Fipresci Prize at the Venice Film Festival
1969 Samurai Banners - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
1969 Red Lion - directed by Kihachi Okamoto
1969 Band of Assassins - directed by Tadashi Sawashima
1969 Watch Out Crimson Bat
1970 Mission: Iron Castle
1970 The Ambitious
1970 Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo - directed by Kihachi Okamoto
1970 The Ambitious - directed by Daisuke Ito
1970 Incident at Blood Pass - directed by Hiroshi Inigaki
1977 Intrigue of the Yagyu Clan - directed by Kinji Fukasaku
1979 The 47 Ronin - directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
1981 The Bushido Blade - directed by Tsugunobu Kotani
1984 Legend of the Eight Samurai
1988 Zatoichi - Directed, written and starring Shintaru Katsu
2002 Twighlight Samurai - directed by Yôji Yamada and nominated for a best foreign film Oscar.
2003 Zatoichi - directed and starring Beat Takeshi and Silver Lion award winner at Venice Film Festival
A twister just barely misses Tulane, but scrapes through the old 'hood, barely missing some key bars, churches and homes. By the looks of the graphic, this thing went right by Bruno's and Alek's old place.
Hat tip to TBON, a much better blog for all you New Orleans lovers. http://thethirdbattleofneworleans.blogspot.com/
