CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States
There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .
POLARITY 147
this entry brought to you by nine inch nails, "all the love in the world"
THE GOOD
American Splendor It seems incredibly self-amused and very confident at its cleverness of mixing imagery of the real Harvey Pekam, Paul Giamatti playing Pekam, and a too-underused animated Pekam. Example: Giamatti frets about going on stage on Letterman, then exits, while I clip of the real Pekam takes the stage; the real Pekam narrates the story and is intermitently cut through to elaborate on character motivation. It's a gimmick that might not have worked. However, Pekam, in both character and real- life, is a lovable, fascinating loser, and so the movie is extremely interesting and fun to watch because of it. Worth checking out; will increase your indie cred two-fold, in both movie and comic book form.
High speed Internet It's frivolous, so if money starts to get short over the next couple months, it'll be the first thing I get rid of. But jesus, it's going to be difficult living without it. When you adjust to super speeds being the norm, when it's gone it's like moving into an apartment without a washing machine. You can survive, but why?
The new car We had to buy a used car (see "the bad"), but the car itself is very nice. It's a '97 Pontiac Bonneville SE. It's very roomy, very comfy. I think the most important thing to me is that the fucking air conditioner works, because the air conditioner in the Escort Wagon we were driving busted over a year ago.
Arrested Development boxed set I didn't catch it at all during the first season on TV, but I caught two or three random episodes, and I had to figure out who was who from context clues, but my god, the show was funny. Not just smiling-hey-I'm-enjoying-myself funny, but laugh-out-loud, honest-to-god guffaws throughout the whole episode funny. So I went out and got the season 1 boxed set and, dare I say it, this is the funniest show on TV. Even more consistently funny than The Simpsons. That's saying a lot.
Louis XIV: The Best Secrets Are Kept Their first release, a five song EP titled Illegal Tender, was a sexy, sarcastic, swarthy stomp through England-cum-Los Angeles sleaze pop, and was a lot of fun. "Finding Out True Love is Blind" is one of the catchiest, most singable songs of the year. Their full-length LP is as good and continues the ideas and themes that the EP started; namely, that lead singer Jason Hill loves the ladies, and he's good at wooing them. But he sings in such a cocky way you're not sure if he's being honest and genuinely believes he's that awesome, or if he's being snarky to be the anti-lover's lover. Problem is the songs that were on the EP are all on the LP, and there's only 20 minutes more, making it only 38 minutes long; I was left unsatisfied. Still, that's not so much a criticism of the band as it is a criticism of their EP to LP song ratio.
THE BAD
The new car So here's the lowdown: the tags on the car that we were driving, the '93 Escort Wagon, were expired Sep 04. Except that we didn't know this until Nov 04. As we were moving at the time, we didn't have the money to just fix it right then. We'd planned on getting it fixed as soon as we got the money-- assumably tax season. Except that when tax season came we got a ticket. So we headed over to the MVD (for some reason the local DMVs here in Maricopa County decided they wanted to be different and name their DMVs after venereal diseases) to see what we could do; unfortunately, since it's registered out of state and the owner of the vehicle, my mom, doesn't live here any more, it might take months to get the stupid thing registered. So when our giant tax return check came-- over three thousand dollars-- I had to go to work and I told Michelle and our roommate Matt to just get a car, I didn't care. And they did. And after some troubles getting the car working, we have a nice, comfy, practical vehicle, that looks way more expensive than our price range. Except that it cost three thousand dollars, leaving us completely broke. And we still have to get it registered and get insurance.
Underworld I wasn't a totally bad movie, in fact, I enjoyed the first 3 quarters of it ok, and even though the movie was overly long, the plot was twisty and convulated, I enjoyed most of it. I even tolerated the piss-poor, wooden acting done by a cast seemingly composed entirely of models, and the confusing, sloppy editting. See, I really like werewolves, and even though the vampires took center stage, the werewolves were integral, and I thought that was refreshing. Unfortunately, the werewolves looked dumb (especially in CGI, although less so as a puppet for close-up shots), and completely retarded when they ran along the walls as if they were Aliens (when the hell have you ever seen anything even vaguely canine run along a wall?) I would've still recommended you look past the movie's myriad flaws but the climax, where the ultimate hybrid creature ended up being a pissy Scott Stapp lookalike turned blue with long fingers, the movie's very firm "bad" was clinched.
Hunter S. Thompson's death I read about it in one of those "Obits" sections in a magazine that's written, like, in the stanza in small print. I hadn't heard. And it was a suicide! What the fuck?
Missing the past couple of entries In my enthusiasm of having high-speed internet, I wanted to, you know, take advantage of it and download a bunch of shit. I mean, come on. What the fuck's the point in having 3 megs a second and my disposal if I'm just going to web browse? Problem is, the first thing I downloaded was not an anti-virus or spyware hunter. You all know how this story ends up. We decided to just reformat the fucker again. We had reformatted back when we lost the internet if you'll recall so we hadn't put much on the hard drive yet, so backing it up was a jiffy. But having the computer down for that time meant no entries.
The new Batman costume Don't get me wrong. I couldn't be more hyped about the next Batman movie. Directed by Christopher Nolan? Christian Bale as Bats? Sign me the fuck up. But the costume doesn't sit right with me. The isignia needs yellow. One, it lets you see that it's a bat, so you'll know who's kicking your ass when you're getting swooped down upon (I mean, it could also be Nightwing, and maybe I could take that guy. But Batman? I don't stand a chance). And two, it draws your attention to it so you're more likely to shoot at it instead of his face. So, practical as well as badass. And it's gone in the new movie! Grr.
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with love from CRS @ 2:09 PM
1 Comments:
I still say vampires are better than werewolves. I didnt mind that movie much, but I dont think I'd enjoy the trilogy they're planning.
I agree with the batman thing. Seems like they've been trying to move away from it for a while now. Pisses me off....and I like Nightwing dammit. He's badass Robin with a mullet. you cant argue with that awesomeness.
