Jay Leno was really good tonight, Jay is very smart. Carlos Mencia is very funny, I looked up his MySpace page. I have started looking at MySpace more seriously; I don't really have a blog there, just instructions to get to this blog and an alphabetical list of "My Favorite Music" from A to Z.
Jon Stewart, Wanda Sykes, Conan O'Brien, Greg Giraldo, Dave Attell and the one I started with, Lewis Black, all have good MySpace pages. So do the people from Seinfeld. Some people don't seem to have MySpace pages, Stephnie Weir doesn't, I gave up looking for other ensemble players from SNL and Mad TV as I correctly reasoned that none of them would have MySpace pages due to the ensemble nature of their professional life at this time.
Anyway, there is a lot of video resource available at the pages for fans. I have got to spend some time over there poring over the help and advice so I can add modules to my own page. I have a lot on my plate at this time looking through webpages from the Mideast, Asia, Africa, et cetera, and presenting material that I like. If one is internatinally minded, some advice would be to look for companies in places other than one's own place, and treat them like one's own place of work and think from there. It's magic, pleasing personable easy comic magic that results.
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Now Conan is on. Something about Paris. There must be some weird reason that hosts don't discuss the nature of the deal where Hilton Hotels became owned by Ladbroke's casino and bookmakers for the duration of the late 1990s.
Britney is often mentioned on tv, and sometimes Jessica Simpson. And Ashlee Simpson. I don't know what's what in Ashlee's world, but I certainly know what's what in the world of punk rock, and Ashlee's music sounds very genuine to me. Remember, folks, punk rock is an encylopedia of problems and anger that isn't really designed to make one feel too uncomfortable, one should know it. When Jim Rome rags on Ashlee Simpson, I am thinking "That chick knows what she's doing" and I am thinking that it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for Rome to cue up NOFX and make the connection. One thing about punk rock is that sometimes one doesn't want to get all cuddly with the stars and people involved, as in the world of punk rock, antitheticality is a commodity.
I do know that someone as good as Ashlee won't care if you learn a whole lot from her music and then decide not to move to Olympia, Washington, just like bands that talk about dude stuff totally appreciate it when female fans drop by. "I'm glad that you're here." Fans of Ashlee should check out female rock bands Autoclave and Fire Party at Dischord Records. I love to spend time with Hang on the Box and Lolita No. 18 from Benten Online, the Lolita 18/Nonstopbody split has the greatest version of the Sesame Street theme song, on and on, and sooner or later I start thinking that I am a chick, something I think I should save for when I have a relationship, like why should one make hot dogs for lunch if there's no mustard, relish or even bread in the house?
"Woo, that's great, you're really getting it."
- "Aw, no, I better get back to NPR and/or sports programming, my workaholic nature is strong, I don't feel like getting all happy right now."
"Right."
I have always thought that Avril LaVigne was really good, she like me knows about religion, punk rock and ice hockey. Bongwater is a pretty smart band, too, I think, and I have 2 Bratmobile records I have listened to more than a dozen times apiece. I think their video about "Don't come to our show" with the ufo landing in Japan is really good. I should buy the Janelle record.
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Ugh. Back to Conan, he again, second day in a row has the best possible band on, The Apples, Weston and more of the Weston ilk could play on that show 3 nights out of 5, it is so complimentary to the show. Weston is to coffee as The Replacements are to beer.
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Carson Daly will hopefully be a great replacement for Conan in 2010.
Friday, June 29, 2007
More on Iraq
To continue with following up on countless late night monologue comments from our late night hosts, here is an easy-to-find site, named "Iraq Companies.com", with lots of information in English, I can't find a click for the Arabic page. There are plenty of Iraqi companies in the Business Directory list, if you really give a care to click and learn. Perhaps one is really anti-Halliburton; here is a way to find out what is really going on. Or perhaps one doesn't care for the way the media covers the issues in Iraq; why not click and see for yourself?
There are computer hardware companies, business consultants, construction companies, construction materials, aviation, accountants, trading, petroleum-related, much more than is currently covered on the English Wikipedia.
Sitting on the center aisle, one knows that people like to go to work, just the same as you. Sitting on the far right or far left, there is no real way of knowing what the attitude is. Usually one is using the ongoing events or issue to describe various other events that are going on. A border dispute in Iraq becomes a symbol for the Immigration Bill in Congress. It's Sunday morning and I feel so alacritous. Spry. Delightful. What one really wants is to think like Jim Halpert, the sales representative on The Office (US) and look like you are actually poring through, scanning through, taking a look at, becoming familiar with, feeling mildly conversant with, finding something interesting in, this topic that is broached again and again every single day, the first thing up on The Daily Show, The Tonight Show, The Late Show, Saturday Night Live, and all regular news in general.
iraqdirectory.com
I suppose if one is going out to a steakhouse, one would read the sports pages beforehand, if one was going out to a soul food restaurant one would listen to some De La Soul before going out, et cetera et cetera. In light of all the attention, one would try to get in the mood for understanding the war by putting on some rai music, available on the web. Blurbs say that it is some kind of revolutionary music for young people, similar to rap; I found it to be more like dub reggae in its nature, somewhat soothing and mildly, unobtrusively interesting, rai is relaxing.
Of course this whole approach to Iraq is based on the sarcastic sentiment of "If one really gave a care about the war, one would be familiar with normal Iraq stuff (like companies, dating services, radio stations, magazines, fashion, pop music etc). If the media is willing to put this issue on tv then the media may as well share my attitude and stop alienating old people who watch the news at 6:30 while all the rest of the people resolutely turn to something else.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
To continue with my discussion of our varsity world and the expectations of a Conan tv audience for whom our military future is of paramount importance, websites in Iraq are easy to find using wikipedia's article "Iraq"; the links are at the end of the article in the section "External links".
Skipping the official government page, of which I could not find the "English" link, although I am sure there is one somewhere (from my vast experience in looking at international websites) I clicked "Ministry of Industry and Minerals". Oil is a mineral, I am sure. There was link for the ministry of foodstuffs (within the Ministry of Industry and Minerals) and I was feeling hungry. A label read "Department of Edible Oils and Gees". Jay likes this kind of thing, and I am sure he and his people always read through, he usually sounds like he knows what he's talking about. I didn't think, I linked, and Gee is of course Ghee, it is a pan-Arabic and Indian word. Gee is not just clarified butter, it is also vegetable oil and hard vegetable oil. Clarified butter is virtually indestructible when left on a shelf in a tropical climate. These Gees must have the same power. It's a vegetable Gee anyway.
Cosmetics are listed in the same department, cosmetics are made using palm oil, don't feel bashful about making industry easy to understand by putting oil and oil-created products in the same internet department.
Palm oil is used to cook with and it is made into soaps and shampoos. I suppose one could buy some palm oil, whose chemical name is lauritic acid, and make one's own sodium lauryl sulfate, it can't be too difficult. Get some almond extract or some flowers from the garden and one has one's own shampoo. This goes under the category of making one's own cola or one's own alarm clock. My dad signed me up for "Discovery of the Month Club" from Scientific American when I was 9 or 10, some of those projects were pretty good. Build a small electric motor or a small geodesic dome. It's important to know how to do so.
The State Company for Textile Industries is also important. Jay Leno talks a lot about how English is used around the world. My Chinese sounds similar to the English language examples he uses on the show. Everyone knows that the word "Matsui" isn't pronounced "Motsuey", right? It is funny, like seeing a beginning hockey player try to lift the puck.
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Skipping the official government page, of which I could not find the "English" link, although I am sure there is one somewhere (from my vast experience in looking at international websites) I clicked "Ministry of Industry and Minerals". Oil is a mineral, I am sure. There was link for the ministry of foodstuffs (within the Ministry of Industry and Minerals) and I was feeling hungry. A label read "Department of Edible Oils and Gees". Jay likes this kind of thing, and I am sure he and his people always read through, he usually sounds like he knows what he's talking about. I didn't think, I linked, and Gee is of course Ghee, it is a pan-Arabic and Indian word. Gee is not just clarified butter, it is also vegetable oil and hard vegetable oil. Clarified butter is virtually indestructible when left on a shelf in a tropical climate. These Gees must have the same power. It's a vegetable Gee anyway.
Cosmetics are listed in the same department, cosmetics are made using palm oil, don't feel bashful about making industry easy to understand by putting oil and oil-created products in the same internet department.
Palm oil is used to cook with and it is made into soaps and shampoos. I suppose one could buy some palm oil, whose chemical name is lauritic acid, and make one's own sodium lauryl sulfate, it can't be too difficult. Get some almond extract or some flowers from the garden and one has one's own shampoo. This goes under the category of making one's own cola or one's own alarm clock. My dad signed me up for "Discovery of the Month Club" from Scientific American when I was 9 or 10, some of those projects were pretty good. Build a small electric motor or a small geodesic dome. It's important to know how to do so.
The State Company for Textile Industries is also important. Jay Leno talks a lot about how English is used around the world. My Chinese sounds similar to the English language examples he uses on the show. Everyone knows that the word "Matsui" isn't pronounced "Motsuey", right? It is funny, like seeing a beginning hockey player try to lift the puck.
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Television Blog
Jay Leno, tonight, had Dr Phil McGraw, and he called himself "Mr Accountability". So, in thinking about it, maybe Dr Phil is to Nancy Reagan as Mr Accountable is to Lenny and Squiggy. Or something like that. Sometimes there is a such a useful difference between red states and blue states. Or is it city and country? Or Out West and Back East? Or maybe sports and entertainment? Or between Disney and the UN?
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Living out west is funny sometimes. I lived there for more than two years, and I loved it, I felt it was a home. I lived in LA, but I never went out to Hollywood or anything like that, it wasn't LA as the Southland, it was more like LA as the neighbor of Hawaii, I was living in a world of ethnic awareness and the Asian combination of being efficient and being laid back, something to do with Buddhism.
Kids in southern California, which is known as the Southland on the news and local talk shows and magazine articles, live in a world of cultural tranquility that is so tranquil as to generate an attitude of not going to college, insofar as one seems not to need it as much compared to growing up Back East. Which doesn't make sense, and college in California is almost free anyway. One should have a car, though, the economy there is designed so that one can afford a car, more than here Back East.
People - or dudes - in California are always talking about Back East, it's almost perfectly ridiculous. My parents and grandparents always told me to "Travel when you're young" and I definitely followed that advice. Back East sentiment has something to do with when it rains in Los Angeles, people slow down to a near halt in driving, not really realizing that traffic on 95, and on 5th Avenue and Broadway between stoplights is going at 65 miles an hour no matter what the rain situation is. It's easy to drive in the rain, as easy as driving in the desert.
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I really like the Conan O'Brien show. Tonight there was a good band, I didn't get the name, reminded me of Funeral Oration's Falling Sickness from a Hopeless Records sampler. It is the same sampler that has Officer Krupke from Schlong's West Side Story cover album. I listened to West Side Story a lot because it was one of the records we had upstairs (as opposed to the Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker and Staple Singers records my dad owned and actually took care of). Barry Manilow, John Denver, West Side Story, a Dick van Dyke musical with "tell me quickly about Hugo and Kim", a Carole King children's record that had a song about "and the lion...ate Pierre...", and some other stuff. "Hello Mrs Garfine, is Charity home from school yet, can I speak to Penelope Ann?...". Bye Bye Birdie, I think was the name of the Dick van Dyke musical. I came home in 1978 with a borrowed copy of The Clash, and "Clash City Rockers" sounded so good, I am not really sure what the rest of my family actually thought of it. As far as Boston is concerned, kids there grow up knowing The Clash and Stiff Little Fingers, or so I have read. I am not sure what people in other cities grow up listening to.
I am definitely looking forward to Conan hosting the Tonight Show at 11:35 in 2010. I am a big Jay Leno fan, so I wasn't too impressed, but of course I take it upon myself to mildy complain to myself if there is something I can't figure out or ignore. One shouldn't be ignorant of what one is mildly irritated by. As a film major I thought I should have a decent answer to the question: "What do you think of Jay stepping down? Do you think Conan will carry the show for NBC (for many years)?" The answer is of course "yes", but I thought about it and the answer is still yes.
The difference between Jay and Conan is so funny. Jay is like a pizza place with pretty good pizza, that is always open. If one has ever visited South Boston and sat at a sidewalk cafe place and drank a latte, the tranquility is supernal, kind of like being at my late Irish grandfather's house, except there is coffee and Guinness. It is a short walk from the USS Constitution in Boston. I really like it there, I should visit again soon. I am so familiar with the Irish ways of doing things, I usually get weird looks from people who take me for solid Irish, when I start talking about China. My theory is that people in Europe have never really had airplanes and computers before, what's the point of staying around the house? In the olden days a carriage ride from here to Hartford must have taken more than 20 hours, enough time to land in Hong Kong, eat dinner and get a decent hotel room. My parents sure wouldn't have let me hang around in our backyard day after day, in our suburban town, so to speak. "Isn't the State Track Meet today?" "No, ma, I thought I would jog near our home instead." The world is varsity, not intramural. Travel when you're young.
I wonder what hosts like Conan think about when they put together the monologue. One supposes there should be a comment on Iraq and Iran. Since we live in the internet age, if I were hosting, I would have staff members find a different website (in the Mideast area) every day and put it up and talk about it. I am looking at these sites anyway here at home. In regard to North Korea, North and South Korean sites are also very interesting. One has to find something to say about these international prospects. One isn't exactly sure why late night talk doesn't use the internet during every show. Change is coming. It sounds like a Carson Daly idea. "Here is the Hwipharam, North Korea's version of the Acura or the Town Car, et cetera." It must be easier to write jokes while reading the internet, compared to writing jokes while reading the paper or watching tv.
Knowing Chinese in 2007 is like owning a car in 1898. The more useless crap one hears about it, the more one is resolute towards the future of the vehicle. "Would you like to buy a horse?" "No thank you."
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Living out west is funny sometimes. I lived there for more than two years, and I loved it, I felt it was a home. I lived in LA, but I never went out to Hollywood or anything like that, it wasn't LA as the Southland, it was more like LA as the neighbor of Hawaii, I was living in a world of ethnic awareness and the Asian combination of being efficient and being laid back, something to do with Buddhism.
Kids in southern California, which is known as the Southland on the news and local talk shows and magazine articles, live in a world of cultural tranquility that is so tranquil as to generate an attitude of not going to college, insofar as one seems not to need it as much compared to growing up Back East. Which doesn't make sense, and college in California is almost free anyway. One should have a car, though, the economy there is designed so that one can afford a car, more than here Back East.
People - or dudes - in California are always talking about Back East, it's almost perfectly ridiculous. My parents and grandparents always told me to "Travel when you're young" and I definitely followed that advice. Back East sentiment has something to do with when it rains in Los Angeles, people slow down to a near halt in driving, not really realizing that traffic on 95, and on 5th Avenue and Broadway between stoplights is going at 65 miles an hour no matter what the rain situation is. It's easy to drive in the rain, as easy as driving in the desert.
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I really like the Conan O'Brien show. Tonight there was a good band, I didn't get the name, reminded me of Funeral Oration's Falling Sickness from a Hopeless Records sampler. It is the same sampler that has Officer Krupke from Schlong's West Side Story cover album. I listened to West Side Story a lot because it was one of the records we had upstairs (as opposed to the Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker and Staple Singers records my dad owned and actually took care of). Barry Manilow, John Denver, West Side Story, a Dick van Dyke musical with "tell me quickly about Hugo and Kim", a Carole King children's record that had a song about "and the lion...ate Pierre...", and some other stuff. "Hello Mrs Garfine, is Charity home from school yet, can I speak to Penelope Ann?...". Bye Bye Birdie, I think was the name of the Dick van Dyke musical. I came home in 1978 with a borrowed copy of The Clash, and "Clash City Rockers" sounded so good, I am not really sure what the rest of my family actually thought of it. As far as Boston is concerned, kids there grow up knowing The Clash and Stiff Little Fingers, or so I have read. I am not sure what people in other cities grow up listening to.
I am definitely looking forward to Conan hosting the Tonight Show at 11:35 in 2010. I am a big Jay Leno fan, so I wasn't too impressed, but of course I take it upon myself to mildy complain to myself if there is something I can't figure out or ignore. One shouldn't be ignorant of what one is mildly irritated by. As a film major I thought I should have a decent answer to the question: "What do you think of Jay stepping down? Do you think Conan will carry the show for NBC (for many years)?" The answer is of course "yes", but I thought about it and the answer is still yes.
The difference between Jay and Conan is so funny. Jay is like a pizza place with pretty good pizza, that is always open. If one has ever visited South Boston and sat at a sidewalk cafe place and drank a latte, the tranquility is supernal, kind of like being at my late Irish grandfather's house, except there is coffee and Guinness. It is a short walk from the USS Constitution in Boston. I really like it there, I should visit again soon. I am so familiar with the Irish ways of doing things, I usually get weird looks from people who take me for solid Irish, when I start talking about China. My theory is that people in Europe have never really had airplanes and computers before, what's the point of staying around the house? In the olden days a carriage ride from here to Hartford must have taken more than 20 hours, enough time to land in Hong Kong, eat dinner and get a decent hotel room. My parents sure wouldn't have let me hang around in our backyard day after day, in our suburban town, so to speak. "Isn't the State Track Meet today?" "No, ma, I thought I would jog near our home instead." The world is varsity, not intramural. Travel when you're young.
I wonder what hosts like Conan think about when they put together the monologue. One supposes there should be a comment on Iraq and Iran. Since we live in the internet age, if I were hosting, I would have staff members find a different website (in the Mideast area) every day and put it up and talk about it. I am looking at these sites anyway here at home. In regard to North Korea, North and South Korean sites are also very interesting. One has to find something to say about these international prospects. One isn't exactly sure why late night talk doesn't use the internet during every show. Change is coming. It sounds like a Carson Daly idea. "Here is the Hwipharam, North Korea's version of the Acura or the Town Car, et cetera." It must be easier to write jokes while reading the internet, compared to writing jokes while reading the paper or watching tv.
Knowing Chinese in 2007 is like owning a car in 1898. The more useless crap one hears about it, the more one is resolute towards the future of the vehicle. "Would you like to buy a horse?" "No thank you."
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is a great show. My favorite episodes on Seinfeld involve George and Jerry sitting around trying to write their screenplay; Jerry and Elaine (and the others) talking about sex; scenes sitting around talking in the coffeeshop and elsewhere; et cetera et cetera. Favorite Kramer episodes include "Moviephone" and "Kramer gets a Job at the Advertising Agency".
My favorite George episodes involve George dealing with a bee in front of some corporate snack bar, as he tries to start "The Summer of George"; his resolute and successful professionalism at the Yankees, Kruger Industrial Smoothing and especially at the place where he sits and organizes the "Penske file"; and his loyalty to Jerry and the group. I especially love the episode where he and Jerry sit in the coffee place talking about the "roomate situation" and then they stay up till the next morning trying to figure out a solution to the problem; anytime the show starts looking like a French new wave movie is very good.
Favorite Elaine episodes involve her trying to earn money dealing with Mr Pitt, J Peterman and Pendant Publishing. Her wardrobe, her modernity, her ability to ignore distracting conversational cues and continue with salient, sociable content; her sense of privacy played against her sense of revealing commentary. Seinfeld presented the character of Elaine Benes as a very positive role model: dealing with life problems like rent and work; dealing with sex and relationship problems; and looking very professional and pleased throughout.
Favorite Jerry episodes involve Jerry establishing the apartment and the group as good places to be; his efforts to be successful as an entertainer; and especially the way he sets the tone for interaction between the people of the show by sharing what he's got.
The show is so international; so many different people are represented, w/o stiffness or ignorance. The scene where Ping gets on the phone with China, talking to the guy at the hair cream company, is my favorite, as is the character of his lawyer.
Tonight's episode involves the John Cheever letters and Jerry and George sitting around trying to write their television project.
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Jay Leno
Tonight Jay is talking about science, sulfur hexaflouride?, a gas that is transparent and so dense that aluminum foil floats on it; this is the kind of programming that leads to some future science show or shows that people will watch to find out what goes on at work, making it easy to look for andfind a job; machine tools, chip making, furniture, automotive, et cetera. I'm sure no one wants to hear how China produces more engineers per capita per year than the US, yet science is what puts money in everyone's pocket. Another great Leno science moment was when he had the two guys on who built the spaceship themselves, and traveled to outer space. They were engineers in the Southwest of the US, and they set a record for altitude using a handmade airplane; Jay had them on the week after they set the record. The ship looked like the space shuttle or a jet and it took off from the ground and flew up to 100 kilometers and above.
When Family Matters had Urkel matriculating to MIT, that was one of my all-time favorite television moments. Urkel never seemed happier than when he was sitting in his dorm room with his friends/roomates, studying. My favorite time away at school was always at finals when all the dining room tables were pushed together to form a study area, making it very easy to learn the material, write papers and pass our courses, in our normal sociable, energetic cooperative setting. It seemed to save study time as well. "Why don't we finish this and get some beer" is a good context for success.
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Friends
Friends is a very good show; it presents some young people living in very reasonably portrayed, modern lifestyles. The apartments were a little big for New York, but that's just so there would be enough space to make a good show. Jennifer Aniston, who is Telly Savalas' goddaughter, who waited tables for a living while studying acting, became so very popular, and then seemed to get interested in Brad Pitt. He's a great guy, with lots of Hollywood smarts, but it seemed to make more sense when she started seeing Vince Vaughn, a person who is more complimentary to the Friends oeuvre.
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The Simpsons
Maybe some people don't know a lot about heavy metal; I do, I love the Adult Swim show about Dethklok, which is produced by alumnae of the Conan O'Brien show. I sometimes think, while watching the show, that their manager/accountant/representative is a film roman communication of Conan O'Brien, whose show's format and environment doesn't allow for as much metal as is presented on Adult Swim. At any rate, Simpsons is so very popular with people who have to go to work, and whose parents take money seriously. One could go on about how removed from the mundane one can get during the first 5 minutes of a Simpsons episode. I found a site in NZ with over 50 forum pages of reminiscence and commentary about people's favorite Simpsons moments; I read all 50 pages, which took over 2 hours as they were long-form forum pages. "Flunk Me? Flunk you!" If I were the producers of The Simpsons I would sort of hold my breath like I had 3 of a kind and just keep on producing on into the future, ad infinitum.
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Saturday Night Live
During the 90s and up until a few years ago, when they started shifting to a Dischord Records-friendly typographical format, the show, which is one of our most important engines of social change, suffered from what seemed to be some kind of mild, unhealthy Confucian medical wind. Tina Fey, who seemed born to be the lead writer of SNL, moved away to 30 Rock, which is very good, she is able to function so well as a prime time producer with her years of experience at SNL. 30 Rock's episode where Tracy Morgan tells Tina at the end of the show that he "edited a literary magazine at school", where the premise of the show was that Tina couln't figure out if Tracy was illiterate, won me over completely, rolling away the stone of diffidence and overly critical thought. I have always thought Tina was an important leader; Weekend Update is very vinegary, when I saw the way the movie Mean Girls handled trouble, with Tina's editorial stamp, was when I was really won over to Tina's ways of doing things.
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Kids in the Hall
This show is so good, one hopes that Lorne will be able to produce more material as he goes on.
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The Office
The Office is very good, one assumes that our national business productivity is rising like the crime rate dropped when Bill Clinton was elected, The Office clears out unhealthy work influences in a clever way, a way that produces energy. Versions of the show are produced in Britain, the US, France, Germany and French Canada; I have just received two seasons of the British version in the mail. Who's Camus, Anyway? is a 2004 Japanese movie about film school that reminded me of The Office.
The Office has a Wikpedia page detailing a comparison between the different international verisons of the shows, it is interesting and helpful to the viewer. I suppose the greatest compliment I could give to The Office is that when the salesman (Dwight Schrute's foil) is working and or talking with the receptionist, I develop a lot of confidence in our national (and global) economy. That's a good compliment. It's a bit puzzling to put two and two together with watching the BBC show produced by Ricky Gervais; since I have set so much store by the American version, I am learning a lot about Britain. I suppose sooner rather than later the German and French-language versions will be available at Netflix w/subtitles.
Other elements of The Office that inspire confidence are Toby (Malcolm in the UK) and, in the US version, when Ryan is explaining economics to Michael and when Ryan is sitting in the car with Michael during the fire at the office.
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The Daily Show and The Late Show
Here in "the large area outside of New York City", one may as well be slightly worried about Stewart and Letterman's complete lack of understanding of the concept of the antithetical.
Antitheticality has to do with Aesop's Fable about the summer sun and the winter wind - they made a bet to see who could make a guy take off his winter coat. Of course, the winter wind tried and tried, and the man just held on more tightly to his coat. The summer sun went next and a minute later the coat was over the guy's shoulder. This can't be news to the reader.
Jon Stewart is a good poker player, or so I have read, and sometimes I hold my breath a little bit if I have a potential winning hand - to me, this is the essence of playing poker. At the poker table, if one feels happy at some turn of the game, it might be a reward in advance for not winning a hand - a happy loser makes for a safe, enjoyable game of poker - the game would have been outlawed a long time ago if people got P.O.D. when a winning hand...didn't. One would think that a good poker player would have a grip on the concept of feeling antithetically happy before losing a hand.
Over and over again, demos are laughing when they win and crying when they lose. How can this be? These political commentators and interested parties emphasize and stress the seriousness of the election. How serious can it be? If it was so serious, then why, time after time, do demos blast the nerds and lose like McGovern? Or Gore?
Not everyone is a Soprano. One watches the show and is amazed when some actor on the show makes the front page of the New York Post for shooting an off-duty policeman while out late at night buying coke and partying. Wouldn't working on this show make one more aware of the dangers of this lifestyle, instead of making one less aware? Is Jersey Pride that intoxicating?
Maybe it is.
Metropolitan people who are deeply concerned with the future of northern South America are known to sometimes exude a value system that is involved with riding the crest of the wave as relates to the cocaine industry. This is an industry that involves factory workers spending hundreds of dollars a month on coke, beer, et cetera. It is an industry that involves working people being too hung over to do the crossword puzzle. Britain and the US have by far the greatest national debts. This is a debt to China, Japan, Germany and others. Are we going to tell them to get the money from Peru, Venezuela and Columbia?
Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois are kind of similar politically. Both are democrats. It seems to me that republican Fred Thompson of Tennessee and of NBC's Law and Order is waiting to catch the election if demo flagships like The Late Show and The Daily Show keep blowing cold wind on "the 297 million American people who aren't watching the show every night". As a Massachusetts citizen, I will say that electing Obama is the most important thing this country can do. As a blogging netizen, I can say that running the fine line between serving coffee to and running the risk of offending "Jets fans" is the most important thing that I can do.
We've all got problems. As Phish once said, "Bag it, tag it, sell it to the butcher in the store" and try to spend some time "Away from the numbers" (as per The Jam). Maybe the presence of overheated hosts on nighttime tv is an indication that there is something good going on in the country. Something new and difficult. Maybe there is a new Bochco show in the works. One can only hope. Maybe liberalization and sanguinity are linked, instead of liberalization and release; when a liberal is in office, it's time for liberals to go to work. If liberals lose an election, then it's time to "rebuild the team".
Like SNL, The Late Show and The Daily Show are important vehicles of social change. TV people will tell you repeatedly that their job is difficult; perhaps as difficult as writing this blog.
As far as being overheated is concerned, medical-emotional heat is confusing in the first place. One tries to be hippocratic about such things. Reading the New York Post, one is amused by the crazy headlines. One gets bored and starts checking through and realizes that every single headline in the paper is written to be crazy and funny. Is life really that funny?
One thing Yankees fans will never understand, is how difficult it is to beat New York, it's as though the lack of common sense translates into athletic ability. I suppose when the salary cap is instituted, the Yanks will join the Knicks and Rangers and the Florida Marlins will get going again.
Definitely.
My favorite George episodes involve George dealing with a bee in front of some corporate snack bar, as he tries to start "The Summer of George"; his resolute and successful professionalism at the Yankees, Kruger Industrial Smoothing and especially at the place where he sits and organizes the "Penske file"; and his loyalty to Jerry and the group. I especially love the episode where he and Jerry sit in the coffee place talking about the "roomate situation" and then they stay up till the next morning trying to figure out a solution to the problem; anytime the show starts looking like a French new wave movie is very good.
Favorite Elaine episodes involve her trying to earn money dealing with Mr Pitt, J Peterman and Pendant Publishing. Her wardrobe, her modernity, her ability to ignore distracting conversational cues and continue with salient, sociable content; her sense of privacy played against her sense of revealing commentary. Seinfeld presented the character of Elaine Benes as a very positive role model: dealing with life problems like rent and work; dealing with sex and relationship problems; and looking very professional and pleased throughout.
Favorite Jerry episodes involve Jerry establishing the apartment and the group as good places to be; his efforts to be successful as an entertainer; and especially the way he sets the tone for interaction between the people of the show by sharing what he's got.
The show is so international; so many different people are represented, w/o stiffness or ignorance. The scene where Ping gets on the phone with China, talking to the guy at the hair cream company, is my favorite, as is the character of his lawyer.
Tonight's episode involves the John Cheever letters and Jerry and George sitting around trying to write their television project.
''''''''''''''
Jay Leno
Tonight Jay is talking about science, sulfur hexaflouride?, a gas that is transparent and so dense that aluminum foil floats on it; this is the kind of programming that leads to some future science show or shows that people will watch to find out what goes on at work, making it easy to look for andfind a job; machine tools, chip making, furniture, automotive, et cetera. I'm sure no one wants to hear how China produces more engineers per capita per year than the US, yet science is what puts money in everyone's pocket. Another great Leno science moment was when he had the two guys on who built the spaceship themselves, and traveled to outer space. They were engineers in the Southwest of the US, and they set a record for altitude using a handmade airplane; Jay had them on the week after they set the record. The ship looked like the space shuttle or a jet and it took off from the ground and flew up to 100 kilometers and above.
When Family Matters had Urkel matriculating to MIT, that was one of my all-time favorite television moments. Urkel never seemed happier than when he was sitting in his dorm room with his friends/roomates, studying. My favorite time away at school was always at finals when all the dining room tables were pushed together to form a study area, making it very easy to learn the material, write papers and pass our courses, in our normal sociable, energetic cooperative setting. It seemed to save study time as well. "Why don't we finish this and get some beer" is a good context for success.
''''''''''''''''''''
Friends
Friends is a very good show; it presents some young people living in very reasonably portrayed, modern lifestyles. The apartments were a little big for New York, but that's just so there would be enough space to make a good show. Jennifer Aniston, who is Telly Savalas' goddaughter, who waited tables for a living while studying acting, became so very popular, and then seemed to get interested in Brad Pitt. He's a great guy, with lots of Hollywood smarts, but it seemed to make more sense when she started seeing Vince Vaughn, a person who is more complimentary to the Friends oeuvre.
'''''''''''''''''
The Simpsons
Maybe some people don't know a lot about heavy metal; I do, I love the Adult Swim show about Dethklok, which is produced by alumnae of the Conan O'Brien show. I sometimes think, while watching the show, that their manager/accountant/representative is a film roman communication of Conan O'Brien, whose show's format and environment doesn't allow for as much metal as is presented on Adult Swim. At any rate, Simpsons is so very popular with people who have to go to work, and whose parents take money seriously. One could go on about how removed from the mundane one can get during the first 5 minutes of a Simpsons episode. I found a site in NZ with over 50 forum pages of reminiscence and commentary about people's favorite Simpsons moments; I read all 50 pages, which took over 2 hours as they were long-form forum pages. "Flunk Me? Flunk you!" If I were the producers of The Simpsons I would sort of hold my breath like I had 3 of a kind and just keep on producing on into the future, ad infinitum.
''''''''''''''''
Saturday Night Live
During the 90s and up until a few years ago, when they started shifting to a Dischord Records-friendly typographical format, the show, which is one of our most important engines of social change, suffered from what seemed to be some kind of mild, unhealthy Confucian medical wind. Tina Fey, who seemed born to be the lead writer of SNL, moved away to 30 Rock, which is very good, she is able to function so well as a prime time producer with her years of experience at SNL. 30 Rock's episode where Tracy Morgan tells Tina at the end of the show that he "edited a literary magazine at school", where the premise of the show was that Tina couln't figure out if Tracy was illiterate, won me over completely, rolling away the stone of diffidence and overly critical thought. I have always thought Tina was an important leader; Weekend Update is very vinegary, when I saw the way the movie Mean Girls handled trouble, with Tina's editorial stamp, was when I was really won over to Tina's ways of doing things.
'''''''''''''''
Kids in the Hall
This show is so good, one hopes that Lorne will be able to produce more material as he goes on.
'''''''''''''''
The Office
The Office is very good, one assumes that our national business productivity is rising like the crime rate dropped when Bill Clinton was elected, The Office clears out unhealthy work influences in a clever way, a way that produces energy. Versions of the show are produced in Britain, the US, France, Germany and French Canada; I have just received two seasons of the British version in the mail. Who's Camus, Anyway? is a 2004 Japanese movie about film school that reminded me of The Office.
The Office has a Wikpedia page detailing a comparison between the different international verisons of the shows, it is interesting and helpful to the viewer. I suppose the greatest compliment I could give to The Office is that when the salesman (Dwight Schrute's foil) is working and or talking with the receptionist, I develop a lot of confidence in our national (and global) economy. That's a good compliment. It's a bit puzzling to put two and two together with watching the BBC show produced by Ricky Gervais; since I have set so much store by the American version, I am learning a lot about Britain. I suppose sooner rather than later the German and French-language versions will be available at Netflix w/subtitles.
Other elements of The Office that inspire confidence are Toby (Malcolm in the UK) and, in the US version, when Ryan is explaining economics to Michael and when Ryan is sitting in the car with Michael during the fire at the office.
''''''''''''''
The Daily Show and The Late Show
Here in "the large area outside of New York City", one may as well be slightly worried about Stewart and Letterman's complete lack of understanding of the concept of the antithetical.
Antitheticality has to do with Aesop's Fable about the summer sun and the winter wind - they made a bet to see who could make a guy take off his winter coat. Of course, the winter wind tried and tried, and the man just held on more tightly to his coat. The summer sun went next and a minute later the coat was over the guy's shoulder. This can't be news to the reader.
Jon Stewart is a good poker player, or so I have read, and sometimes I hold my breath a little bit if I have a potential winning hand - to me, this is the essence of playing poker. At the poker table, if one feels happy at some turn of the game, it might be a reward in advance for not winning a hand - a happy loser makes for a safe, enjoyable game of poker - the game would have been outlawed a long time ago if people got P.O.D. when a winning hand...didn't. One would think that a good poker player would have a grip on the concept of feeling antithetically happy before losing a hand.
Over and over again, demos are laughing when they win and crying when they lose. How can this be? These political commentators and interested parties emphasize and stress the seriousness of the election. How serious can it be? If it was so serious, then why, time after time, do demos blast the nerds and lose like McGovern? Or Gore?
Not everyone is a Soprano. One watches the show and is amazed when some actor on the show makes the front page of the New York Post for shooting an off-duty policeman while out late at night buying coke and partying. Wouldn't working on this show make one more aware of the dangers of this lifestyle, instead of making one less aware? Is Jersey Pride that intoxicating?
Maybe it is.
Metropolitan people who are deeply concerned with the future of northern South America are known to sometimes exude a value system that is involved with riding the crest of the wave as relates to the cocaine industry. This is an industry that involves factory workers spending hundreds of dollars a month on coke, beer, et cetera. It is an industry that involves working people being too hung over to do the crossword puzzle. Britain and the US have by far the greatest national debts. This is a debt to China, Japan, Germany and others. Are we going to tell them to get the money from Peru, Venezuela and Columbia?
Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois are kind of similar politically. Both are democrats. It seems to me that republican Fred Thompson of Tennessee and of NBC's Law and Order is waiting to catch the election if demo flagships like The Late Show and The Daily Show keep blowing cold wind on "the 297 million American people who aren't watching the show every night". As a Massachusetts citizen, I will say that electing Obama is the most important thing this country can do. As a blogging netizen, I can say that running the fine line between serving coffee to and running the risk of offending "Jets fans" is the most important thing that I can do.
We've all got problems. As Phish once said, "Bag it, tag it, sell it to the butcher in the store" and try to spend some time "Away from the numbers" (as per The Jam). Maybe the presence of overheated hosts on nighttime tv is an indication that there is something good going on in the country. Something new and difficult. Maybe there is a new Bochco show in the works. One can only hope. Maybe liberalization and sanguinity are linked, instead of liberalization and release; when a liberal is in office, it's time for liberals to go to work. If liberals lose an election, then it's time to "rebuild the team".
Like SNL, The Late Show and The Daily Show are important vehicles of social change. TV people will tell you repeatedly that their job is difficult; perhaps as difficult as writing this blog.
As far as being overheated is concerned, medical-emotional heat is confusing in the first place. One tries to be hippocratic about such things. Reading the New York Post, one is amused by the crazy headlines. One gets bored and starts checking through and realizes that every single headline in the paper is written to be crazy and funny. Is life really that funny?
One thing Yankees fans will never understand, is how difficult it is to beat New York, it's as though the lack of common sense translates into athletic ability. I suppose when the salary cap is instituted, the Yanks will join the Knicks and Rangers and the Florida Marlins will get going again.
Definitely.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
The World
1st Draft
It should be clear by now. - PiL "Careering"
This movie is smart, it feels like one is reading some book by Ezra Vogel, the great Harvard sinologist. Or does it feel like the Seinfeld episode with Miss America, the doves and the water from the melted ice? Sometimes one watches a movie that goes beyond 'easily reviewable'. Directed by Zhang Ke Jia, who is also the director of Unknown Pleasures.
When you realize....it's just a story.. - The Teardrop Explodes
What's a word for 'epic' that could describe this movie? It's not epic. My Sassy Girl and The World seem like the two widest Asian movies.
In the sun, in the sun, in the sun sun sun. - Lydon Sun
Made in 2004. Available at Netflix and yesasia (link).
Abstract
Director Zhang Ke Jia's first big budget feature revolves around the tumultuous love affair between two workers at a Chinese theme park....and an inside look at the heartbreaking lives of the men and women who reliy on this example of consumerism to eke out a living. - from the Netflix review.
It should be clear by now. - PiL "Careering"
This movie is smart, it feels like one is reading some book by Ezra Vogel, the great Harvard sinologist. Or does it feel like the Seinfeld episode with Miss America, the doves and the water from the melted ice? Sometimes one watches a movie that goes beyond 'easily reviewable'. Directed by Zhang Ke Jia, who is also the director of Unknown Pleasures.
When you realize....it's just a story.. - The Teardrop Explodes
What's a word for 'epic' that could describe this movie? It's not epic. My Sassy Girl and The World seem like the two widest Asian movies.
In the sun, in the sun, in the sun sun sun. - Lydon Sun
Made in 2004. Available at Netflix and yesasia (link).
Abstract
Director Zhang Ke Jia's first big budget feature revolves around the tumultuous love affair between two workers at a Chinese theme park....and an inside look at the heartbreaking lives of the men and women who reliy on this example of consumerism to eke out a living. - from the Netflix review.
Unknown Pleasures
Unknown Pleasures is an ITV type movie made in China, slackers think about leaving their town, they sort of get somewhere, it's a good movie. There is a reference to the movie Love Will Tear Us Apart, for fans of the band Joy Division. Directed by the same person who directed The World. Available at Netflix, made in 2003.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
开门見山 - Open Door, See Mountain
你要哈佛,斯丹佛,你要“公共敵人”. 迈尔士·戴维斯好不好?
パブリック・エナミー
http://www.publicenemy.com/
巴拉克·奥巴马
迈尔士·戴维斯
You're Gonna Get Yours
Sophisticated Bitch
Miuzi Weights a Ton
Timebomb
Too Much Posse
Rightstarter (Message to a Black Man)
Public Enemy No. 1
M.P.E.
Yo! Bum Rush the Show
Raise the Roof
Megablast
Terminator X Speaks With His Hands
2007
Vocabulary
迈尔士·戴维斯 Miles Davis
巴拉克·奥巴马 Barack Obama
パブリック・エナミー
http://www.publicenemy.com/
巴拉克·奥巴马
迈尔士·戴维斯
You're Gonna Get Yours
Sophisticated Bitch
Miuzi Weights a Ton
Timebomb
Too Much Posse
Rightstarter (Message to a Black Man)
Public Enemy No. 1
M.P.E.
Yo! Bum Rush the Show
Raise the Roof
Megablast
Terminator X Speaks With His Hands
2007Vocabulary
迈尔士·戴维斯 Miles Davis
巴拉克·奥巴马 Barack Obama
Monday, June 18, 2007
Blonde on Blonde - “金髪在金髪" - 是一个Bob Dylan的最好乐片,任何一个人知道,特別地常春藤联盟的職业人们,因為"It's pretty good." 也要 Blood on the Tracks和Bringing it All Back Home 更多.
Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35 - 聖经中,“投石撃死”是甚么? 用投石,歌中,很難的,歌很好,有众.
Pledging My Time 孔夫学中,孝順很有要重,美中海外华问“欧美孝順主义在那儿?在这儿,歌不難.
Visions of Johanna - 有沒有愛问題?
One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)
I Want You
Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again - 頁好.
Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat - 笑
Just Like a Woman - 尊敬女人.
Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) -
Temporary Like Achilles -
Absolutely Sweet Marie -
4th Time Around -
Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands - 歌很長,"Low Lands"或許荷兰,你要意思一九四O/一九五O,歌有众.
Vocabulary
金髪 blonde
聖经 bible
歌 song
孝順 filial
荷兰 Holland
众 popular
Sunday, June 17, 2007
惡宗 - Sell sell sell
市郊好不好? 恶宗组,N0FX组有 "硌山机"的Epitaph Records,包括和 Green Day, Offspring, Rancid, 朋克成貝! www.epitaph.com, 很多乐隊. 惡宗是一个“和音的朋克”的模節,有名在葡萄牙和巴西的朋克世界中. 这片是一九九二的編辑,英语的百科接,现在片沒有中文百科论文, 有日本的乐隊的论文; 韩论文:펑크 록.
I Want To Conquer The World 你好,喜迎.我要吂?我要嬴?
Do What You Want (Live version)同居的长命的自由勸告
You Are (The Government) 莊....醬? 你是开会政界!干杯!
Modern Man 科枝和社会
We're Only Gonna Die
The Answer 科枝的历吏
Flat Earth Society 科枝的历吏
Against The Grain 自私法
Generator 科枝的历吏
Anesthesia 科枝的历吏
Suffer 历吏
Faith Alone “唯信念”
No Control “(我们)沒有支配;(我们)沒有管理.
21st Century Digital Boy
Atomic Garden 歌中太高莊, 大贵
No Direction 加州的纽约
Automatic Man 自功人
Change Of Ideas 科枝的历吏
Sanity “神志清醒〝
Walk Away - see The Answer
Best For You "壴反的"长命的自由勸告
Fuck Armageddon This Is Hell (Live Version) (from How Could Hell Be Any Worse?)
Vocabulary
惡 bad
宗 religion
科枝的历吏 history of science
和音的 harmonic
自功人 automatic man
同居 cohabitation
长命 long life
I Want To Conquer The World 你好,喜迎.我要吂?我要嬴?
Do What You Want (Live version)同居的长命的自由勸告
You Are (The Government) 莊....醬? 你是开会政界!干杯!
Modern Man 科枝和社会
We're Only Gonna Die
The Answer 科枝的历吏
Flat Earth Society 科枝的历吏
Against The Grain 自私法
Generator 科枝的历吏
Anesthesia 科枝的历吏
Suffer 历吏
Faith Alone “唯信念”
No Control “(我们)沒有支配;(我们)沒有管理.
21st Century Digital Boy
Atomic Garden 歌中太高莊, 大贵
No Direction 加州的纽约
Automatic Man 自功人
Change Of Ideas 科枝的历吏
Sanity “神志清醒〝
Walk Away - see The Answer
Best For You "壴反的"长命的自由勸告
Fuck Armageddon This Is Hell (Live Version) (from How Could Hell Be Any Worse?)
Vocabulary
惡 bad
宗 religion
科枝的历吏 history of science
和音的 harmonic
自功人 automatic man
同居 cohabitation
长命 long life
Television Nowadays
Broadcast TV in order of frequency:
宋飛 - Seinfeld - rarely miss a day, often watch two episodes
辛普森一家 - Simpsons - usually daily, often two
King of the Hill -
Sports when available
Mad TV
Saturday Night Live
The Office - pretty good
My Name Is Earl - sometimes
案影追踪 - CSI
Law and Order
Family Guy
American Dad
South Park - is on late
The Life and Times of Old Christine - just found out this was on on Monday and adjusted my schedule
Two and a Half Men - What could stereotypical manhaters possibly see in this show? Pass the McNuggets, please.
(Adult Swim, at their website)
___________________
Media School
As far as Marquee Moon is concerned, let us consider New York City to be a demographic media market that is large, influential and offers many specific advantages; in short, it is possible to be a recording artist or comedian in New York without traveling outside the city to make a good living. Like....Buster Poindexter, Blue Man Group, Television, The Producers, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, et cetera. Of course David Johansen (Buster Poindexter) and Blue Man Group have traveled outside the city and done so very well, and Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs are big on college radio everywhere, all of which just goes to make my argument, that using an NYC base is a very good way to be a media person.
Television (the band, (wikilinked)) is an NYC Neil Young/Hocus Pocus/Soul Asylum/Nirvana, metal for the city, if one needs some encouragement to buy this fine double guitar music product; sorry to sound confused, I am not a music critic. Maybe, ask yourself, What would Franklin Delano Romanowski listen to on a rainy day?
NY, Boston, LA, Taiwan/HK/Singapore/Korea/Japan/China; various country music areas, all tend to be the same way, in Buddhism there is such a thing as "The Small Vehicle" and "The Big Vehicle". Metallica, American Idol, Kanye West, NBC, ABC, the Simpsons all ride the big car, which is a good thing because it's a difficult skill, a difficult task to accomplish, to appeal to the nation. It's not that important to worry about, if one wants to learn guitar or if one has practiced talking to themselves so much that they got really good at talking and could walk on stage like Michael Myers or Jerry Seinfeld.
Import Export
NOFX Punk in Drublic
这片太中,N0FX片前有類似的 "production value", 这片很受人歡迎的,加州出品. 片名是 "Drunk in Public" (重醉的在公中), 罝換D和P名有笑. 也要NOFX "Pump Up The Valuum", NOFX "Heavy Petting Zoo", 等等.
有时,朋克記說"肥米克” (Vo, B) 是“朋克的最笑人”. 也,“NOFX”是甚么頭字语? 不知,有不同的翻译,有时想一个數学的函數(n of x).
1 Linoleum 有壴
2 Leave it Alone
3 Dig 大,莊
4 The Cause 莊,隋,笑
7 Perfect Government
8 The Brews 笑
9 The Quass
10 Dying Degree 太莊,太好
11 Fleas
12 Lori Meyers 社会
13 Jeff Wears Birkenstocks 社会
14 Punk Guy
15 Happy Guy
16 Reeko "Reeko" 聲 = 西班牙语的 "Rico"; 汉语的“有钱的”,加州似乎是有钱的.
17 Scavenger Type 尾聲
Vocabulary
罝換 transpose
頭字语 acronym
函數 function (mathematics)
類似的 similar
有钱的 rich
似乎是 seem
尾聲 coda
这片太中,N0FX片前有類似的 "production value", 这片很受人歡迎的,加州出品. 片名是 "Drunk in Public" (重醉的在公中), 罝換D和P名有笑. 也要NOFX "Pump Up The Valuum", NOFX "Heavy Petting Zoo", 等等.
有时,朋克記說"肥米克” (Vo, B) 是“朋克的最笑人”. 也,“NOFX”是甚么頭字语? 不知,有不同的翻译,有时想一个數学的函數(n of x).
1 Linoleum 有壴
2 Leave it Alone
3 Dig 大,莊
4 The Cause 莊,隋,笑
7 Perfect Government
8 The Brews 笑
9 The Quass
10 Dying Degree 太莊,太好
11 Fleas
12 Lori Meyers 社会
13 Jeff Wears Birkenstocks 社会
14 Punk Guy
15 Happy Guy
16 Reeko "Reeko" 聲 = 西班牙语的 "Rico"; 汉语的“有钱的”,加州似乎是有钱的.
17 Scavenger Type 尾聲
Vocabulary
罝換 transpose
頭字语 acronym
函數 function (mathematics)
類似的 similar
有钱的 rich
似乎是 seem
尾聲 coda
The Hole
The Hole is a really good movie, it has that grungy science fiction look, (like Brazil, 2046, Minority Report); a virus has reduced the population of Taiwan and a man and a woman are sort of getting together. As opposed to Brazil, Minority Report, Stephen King and Bladerunner, this world lacks some pressure. Buddhism, I guess. To be serious, the lack of cinamatic pressure is more than made up for by the unavoidable concept of the permanence of the world and its sustaining power, no matter what happens. There are 3 bn people living happily in the Sapporo-Bombay-Indonesia area and logic says that there must be something pretty good about Buddhism and Hinduism, am I right? Perhaps one has some electronics or automotive from there, maybe some toys or decorations from Walmart, maybe one has called about one's computer dozens of times. I don't know.
At times people express worries about the balance of trade; hey, I'm doing my part by translating out records like All Rise by Naked Raygun (see below). Naked Raygun - that's a quality good. There's a lot of mildly irritated people who need to complain, to release what in Asia might be known as "Medical Heat", but it really takes someone who knows the language(s) to create a nice economic world to live in. Of course there is some amount of alienation involved in working for the "Joint Asian and American Economic Cultural Forum", but then again, there is a some alienation involved in leaving one's teenage years behind and going to vocational school and then owning one's own auto repair shop. Isn't there? Isn't it difficult? It is, as a matter of fact. Difficult, and very much worth it to do so. I am not sure what religions say, but I have heard it said that the universe was created by work. So read a book or something.
Of course, it is logical to ask "What's the problem (over there); I'm not a jerk....?" In reading the Taipei Times English pages, there seems to be a problem with what the police call "Black Gold", which consists of urban hillbillies living in a national Yuppie economy in Asia, like Taiwan, who don't seem to be the least bit interested in the "Joint Asian and American Economic Cultural Forum"; I suppose if one looks closer it's not really true about not being interested, but that's the problem, or so I have read.
It's like sports; one needs a coach to be good at something. In my experience of Asia, I have had nothing but Bill Belichick, and for my part, what you give is what you get. Or what I get is what I give. Whatever. Fans in New Orleans and New England know, the coach is an important person in the organization. This movie is available at Netflix, made in 1998. Wikilink.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Port of Call - Boston
组绿 (Gang Green - Another Case of Brewtality)
波士頓市, 也要 Another Wasted Nignt.
1 Eviction Party 驅逐大慶
2 Wash the Blood 洗血
3 Break the Bottle 打破瓶品
4 Hole (In the Road) 洞(在公路)
5 Death of the Party
6 I Missed It
7 Beach Whistle
8 Don't You Know
9 Tricked into Bed...Again
10 Denied
11 This Job Sucks 這个工作太壞
12 Out on the Couch 用
13 Weekend Millionaire 週末百邁富翁
14 I'll Worry About It Monday
15 Time to pay
16 Say Good Buy
17 Livin' In Oblivion 住在湮滅
18 Accidental Overdose
19 6,000 Crucified Slaves
20 Suspect Device
21 Penalty Box
22 To the Point
23 Here to Stay
Vocabulary
週末 weekend
百邁富翁 millionaire
湮滅 oblivion
波士頓市, 也要 Another Wasted Nignt.
1 Eviction Party 驅逐大慶
2 Wash the Blood 洗血
3 Break the Bottle 打破瓶品
4 Hole (In the Road) 洞(在公路)
5 Death of the Party
6 I Missed It
7 Beach Whistle
8 Don't You Know
9 Tricked into Bed...Again
10 Denied
11 This Job Sucks 這个工作太壞
12 Out on the Couch 用
13 Weekend Millionaire 週末百邁富翁
14 I'll Worry About It Monday
15 Time to pay
16 Say Good Buy
17 Livin' In Oblivion 住在湮滅
18 Accidental Overdose
19 6,000 Crucified Slaves
20 Suspect Device
21 Penalty Box
22 To the Point
23 Here to Stay
Vocabulary
週末 weekend
百邁富翁 millionaire
湮滅 oblivion
The Balance of Trade
婐的光缐槍器 (Naked Raygun): 陼立 (All Rise)
1 Home of the Brave 你住在家,你要出作工作,家人们有沒有問題嗎?
2 Dog at Large ??? “Tadaima!"
3 I follow you around, you're like a sailing swan! I worship the soil that you walk upon! 假性好性情.
4 Mr Gridlock 你在工作,工作人沒有大問題,家人討論不存在問題.
5 The Strip 有大樓区,歌討論“樓区存在的发行”.
6 I Remember 笑的,息的郷愁.
7 Those Who Move 人有消息.
8 The Envelope (佛的)大社会有旧法.
9 Backlash Jack 人言“我知亚問題”
10 Peacemaker 笑不笑? 你解!
11 New Dreams 冓見,我有好健康.
Marketing project created using MS's IME Pad and a Far East English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary. The IME is free, see Wikipedia "IME"; the dictionary costs about $35 in Chinatown.
Vocabulary
郷愁 nostalgia
好性情 bonhomie
不存在 nonexistent
消息 information
討論 discuss
发行 issues
1 Home of the Brave 你住在家,你要出作工作,家人们有沒有問題嗎?
2 Dog at Large ??? “Tadaima!"
3 I follow you around, you're like a sailing swan! I worship the soil that you walk upon! 假性好性情.
4 Mr Gridlock 你在工作,工作人沒有大問題,家人討論不存在問題.
5 The Strip 有大樓区,歌討論“樓区存在的发行”.
6 I Remember 笑的,息的郷愁.
7 Those Who Move 人有消息.
8 The Envelope (佛的)大社会有旧法.
9 Backlash Jack 人言“我知亚問題”
10 Peacemaker 笑不笑? 你解!
11 New Dreams 冓見,我有好健康.
Marketing project created using MS's IME Pad and a Far East English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary. The IME is free, see Wikipedia "IME"; the dictionary costs about $35 in Chinatown.
Vocabulary
郷愁 nostalgia
好性情 bonhomie
不存在 nonexistent
消息 information
討論 discuss
发行 issues
Friday, June 15, 2007
My Music, Nowadays
As far as music is concerned, I spend time with a cassette made from Green Day's American Idiot and Talking Heads' Fear of Music. I have a cassette made from cd by Lure, which I have listened to up to 30 times in the past 7 years. That might not seem like a lot, but one should consider one's own listening habits; how often has one listened to one's favorite records? Jerry's Kids Kill Kill Kill is another favorite, more information on being pissed off and alleviated in re: evangelical power, it's serious Boston Hahd Coah, predating the Dropkick Murphys.
To be much nicer, Villiers Terrace.com has a lot of Echo and the Bunnymen material and Bloc Party's new record is pretty good, and as far as dub is concerned, King Tubby, Augustus Pablo, Prince Far-I, Mad Professor, Lee Scratch Perry and Horace Andy are records that are necessary to listening to any baseball game on the radio. I just won't listen to sports radio without dub. Dub is very soothing and I finally have an answer to "If you don't listen to The Dead, how do you relax?"
I guess I really do know punk rock; I have listened to Crying Nut's mostly Korean language cds Crying Nut 4 and OK Marching Church several times in the past two months, it sounds great.
Keeping it corporate, Public Enemy, The Jam and Bob Dylan are regular cds, sometimes the Wikipedia gets nutty and Blonde on Blonde gives one a positive, disinterested New York attitude. John Lydon's Sun is pretty good, Jean Grae is pretty good. I haven't listened to Bratmobile in a while.
As far as records that I don't see as much now as in the past, the list includes Guided by Voices' Vampire on Titus; Bad Religion, The Replacements and Butthole Surfers. All that reminds me of B-E-E-R, and I just don't have the time, man.
WGBH's Eric in the Evening is like living across the street from Miles Davis.
1 Return of the Super Ape by Lee Perry.
2 Lure - early punk rock from Beijing, I think, via Kuala Lumpur, maybe you will buy this: Wire is to the day as Lure is to the night. Here is a Japanese language link with English language information: Link
3 Jerry's Kids - The Catholic high school I went to for a year, in this city, was taught by men from Quebec; these guys look familiar. Superstar!
Tart
Tart is very tart and definitely gets a Check Plus. It is so cautionary and nothing's funny in this world.
The lead is a female Bart Simpson who goes to a post-Montessori school in Manhattan. Sometimes, watching The Simpsons, it feels good to run with the Bartman. Then like the weather in New England, it changes and becomes a case of "speak for yourself, Bart."
This movie is like a prequel to NYPD Blue; where do the jerks come from, who sit on the couch at the precinct house and piss off Detective Sifowicz, pouring sawdust into the underfunded engine of the city's peace of mind? Maybe the viewer wants to know, maybe the viewer would like to see what is happening in these cases, without losing his or her sense of credulity.
As far as the pressure of this movie's world and the varying degrees of disproportionate behaviour, the movie seems to be saying "Maybe you can deal with this,...and maybe you should."
The production value is Marisa Tomei-Elaine Benes and R.E.M.'s artwork; autumn pastels, beige and gray and spotless apartments, lots of black and white, it seems permanent, and grim in a beautiful way, until one realizes it is just like a cup of tea, no Budweiser, no epiphanies, just repeated discomfort and exposure, until the movie ends up sitting waiting for a detective. And like NYPD Blue, the message seems to be "try not to worry....too much."
This film resembles The Tempest, The Virgin Suicides and The 7-Ups (a crime thriller starring Roy Scheider). As is the case with Korean movies about females in high school, the production value of the video cover is inversely prportional to the quality of the movie. Available at Netflix' Watch Now; here is Netflix' description of the movie:
Cat Storm (Dominique Swain) is a teenager trying to survive life at an all-girls private school in New York City. She and her best friend, Delilah (Bijou Phillips), have constant run-ins with the school, their parents and their classmates. Cat and Delilah are outsiders, until one day, by chance, Cat makes it into the in crowd and ends up dating William (Brad Renfro), who's handsome, popular and has a knack for trouble.
The lead is a female Bart Simpson who goes to a post-Montessori school in Manhattan. Sometimes, watching The Simpsons, it feels good to run with the Bartman. Then like the weather in New England, it changes and becomes a case of "speak for yourself, Bart."
This movie is like a prequel to NYPD Blue; where do the jerks come from, who sit on the couch at the precinct house and piss off Detective Sifowicz, pouring sawdust into the underfunded engine of the city's peace of mind? Maybe the viewer wants to know, maybe the viewer would like to see what is happening in these cases, without losing his or her sense of credulity.
As far as the pressure of this movie's world and the varying degrees of disproportionate behaviour, the movie seems to be saying "Maybe you can deal with this,...and maybe you should."
The production value is Marisa Tomei-Elaine Benes and R.E.M.'s artwork; autumn pastels, beige and gray and spotless apartments, lots of black and white, it seems permanent, and grim in a beautiful way, until one realizes it is just like a cup of tea, no Budweiser, no epiphanies, just repeated discomfort and exposure, until the movie ends up sitting waiting for a detective. And like NYPD Blue, the message seems to be "try not to worry....too much."
This film resembles The Tempest, The Virgin Suicides and The 7-Ups (a crime thriller starring Roy Scheider). As is the case with Korean movies about females in high school, the production value of the video cover is inversely prportional to the quality of the movie. Available at Netflix' Watch Now; here is Netflix' description of the movie:
Cat Storm (Dominique Swain) is a teenager trying to survive life at an all-girls private school in New York City. She and her best friend, Delilah (Bijou Phillips), have constant run-ins with the school, their parents and their classmates. Cat and Delilah are outsiders, until one day, by chance, Cat makes it into the in crowd and ends up dating William (Brad Renfro), who's handsome, popular and has a knack for trouble.
A Bout de Souffle
Breathless; or Painless, as in "This movie is of such quality so as to watch it is relatively painless, insofar as it is made in 1959/1960, it is French, and it has jazz on the soundtrack." It is the first film of Jean Luc Godard, written with Francois Truffaut, and it is beat like Jack Keroouac. It's a case of "if one doesn't know much about jazz, one wants to have Miles Davis' Kind of Blue; if one doesn't have an Elvis Costello album, Imperial Bedroom is a good one to get; if one doesn't know punk rock, London Calling is a good place to start; if one is confused about rap, head right over to Public Enemy's first two records. In the case of Bob Dylan, do you like New York - Blonde on Blonde - or SoCal - Bringing it All Back Home - or suburbia - John Wesley Harding - or et cetera...?"
If one is not in love with a genre, one needs to get a good first impression, if one hasn't got the time, one doesn't want to waste one's time. I like French beat films, this one is airy, moves right along, the director and writers make the effort to present something that lots of people can enjoy.
It might be worth it to think of it this way: If a person didn't know much about baseball and wanted to know who to root for, what kind of advice should they get? It pays to market the material that you know and love. Available at Netflix.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Who's Camus, Anyway?
This is a good movie, at Netflix' Watch Now, that has what seems to be an unwieldy and artistic title; actually, it is The Office makes a Movie at Film School, if you're a fan of The Office. It may as well have been titled "The Movie Project" - if it were a tv show.
During the commission of the big movie, the people on the crew make references to Jean Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Albert Camus, Death in Venice by Tomas Mann, Quentin Tarantino, Francis Coppola, and "the guy who directed The Good, The Bad and The Ugly".
The Office on NBC sometimes gets a bit mindboggling; there is a scene at a restaurant in the middle that is kind of mindboggling. There is a character in this movie who is like Janice from Friends, who functions in a different context, more like that of The Office.
My dad had a copy of Camus' The Plague lying around the house; actually, I think I bought it for cheap at a used bookstore in Boston, myself, 20 years ago; at any rate, I tried reading it and I found it most impenetrable. The book has to do with France and Algiers, and I assume it has something to do with the Battle of Algiers, subjects which are so important to our current events nowadays. The movie "The Battle of Algiers" is at the front page of Netflix' Classics section, I might as well watch it. France is 10% Muslim, many people from Algeria, and Algeria certainly has everything to do with the French national soccer team, Zinedane Zidane's family having originally come across the Mediterreanean. Montreal is the 3rd biggest French speaking city, after Paris and Brazzaville, and the great Mark Messier from Quebec looks similar to Zidane.
I couldn't really read The Plague; nor could I get through all of Dostoievski, but I did read Death in Venice a long time ago, and it was really easy to read, Aleksandr Pushkin is also easy to read. Death in Venice and Pushkin read like comic books, or like tv shows. Since tv shows and movies cost a lot of money, they have to be written so that people actually like them. It is difficult to foist a boring show on the people. I suppose it was different in the olden days, novels are cheap to write and easy to foist.
This movie was made last year.
During the commission of the big movie, the people on the crew make references to Jean Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Albert Camus, Death in Venice by Tomas Mann, Quentin Tarantino, Francis Coppola, and "the guy who directed The Good, The Bad and The Ugly".
The Office on NBC sometimes gets a bit mindboggling; there is a scene at a restaurant in the middle that is kind of mindboggling. There is a character in this movie who is like Janice from Friends, who functions in a different context, more like that of The Office.
My dad had a copy of Camus' The Plague lying around the house; actually, I think I bought it for cheap at a used bookstore in Boston, myself, 20 years ago; at any rate, I tried reading it and I found it most impenetrable. The book has to do with France and Algiers, and I assume it has something to do with the Battle of Algiers, subjects which are so important to our current events nowadays. The movie "The Battle of Algiers" is at the front page of Netflix' Classics section, I might as well watch it. France is 10% Muslim, many people from Algeria, and Algeria certainly has everything to do with the French national soccer team, Zinedane Zidane's family having originally come across the Mediterreanean. Montreal is the 3rd biggest French speaking city, after Paris and Brazzaville, and the great Mark Messier from Quebec looks similar to Zidane.
I couldn't really read The Plague; nor could I get through all of Dostoievski, but I did read Death in Venice a long time ago, and it was really easy to read, Aleksandr Pushkin is also easy to read. Death in Venice and Pushkin read like comic books, or like tv shows. Since tv shows and movies cost a lot of money, they have to be written so that people actually like them. It is difficult to foist a boring show on the people. I suppose it was different in the olden days, novels are cheap to write and easy to foist.
This movie was made last year.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Dersu Uzala.....Dersu Uzala again
It's integrational...
Ah, well. This great adventure movie, Dersu Uzala, won an Academy Award for 1975, it's directed by the great Akira Kurosawa, and I seem to remember it playing at the Avon Cinema on Thayer Street in Providence, near here, for months, at the time. The Avon is a repertory cinema. This movie is at Netflix.
This movie brings back the power of the 1970s, as also seen in movies like Born Free, The Parent Trap and in record albums like Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. That spirit of the 70s is a precious thing.
In 1975, Asia was very, very busy, building what today is Sony, Hyundai, Taiwan Semicondutor, Lenovo, the Malaysian High-Tech Corridor, Shin and more. American concepts of gung-ho boy scoutism were important insofar as in the American mind, they were linked to concepts of Asia, concepts which are present in this film. Movies give energy, and it's a good movie, rated G, that shows what life is like between Russian army surveyors and East Asian Sibieran hunters, without going into any detail whatsoever in regards to various issues which seem more important nowadays, issues such as the strong links between Tibetan religion and Mongolian religion, to name one. These links, links of religious identity, play an important role in East Asian history, especially as pertains to ideas of civilization and living a meaningful life.
To speak in terms of sports, the culture of the 1970s is like adding a lot of energy to a system, a concept that is important in diode study - the erroneous theory of life in this case being something like: "If one pours energy into a system, the system will improve." In the case of men walking through Siberia for months on end, this theory goes very far past the obvious counterconcept: "One should organize one's thoughts." If a baseball team simply gets pumped beyond pumped, one ends up so unbelivably stoked that one forgets about the sudoku.
..................................................
In Bring the Noise, Public Enemy raps:
Listen for lessons inside music....indeed. There is so much more positivity than meets the eye, so much more one wanted to say, the music can carry it well. So one should know. It is easy to make props and movie scenes to convey information, by making stuff that looks like words, it adds grandeur, or pathos, or detail, etc. Akira Kurosawa did a lot of work in developing cinema in East Asia, figuring out what the audience wanted to see in terms of dictionary mise en scene. If the viewer finds him or herself getting high on life by watching a Japanese movie, I would suggest that the viewer might as well look into this book instead; I mean, it seems obvious to me.
...........................................................
Ginseng
There is a good scene that involves people talking about harvesting ginseng. If one wants to buy some Northeast Asian ginseng, it is available at H-Mart on the East Coast and K-Grocer on the West Coast.
Hockey
And how is Northeast Asia doing to-day? Here is the Wikipedia article link for Northeast Asia's professional hockey league: Asia League Ice Hockey
Siberia: Hockey, two flags and a metallurgy facility.
..............................................................
Two Japanese-born players have been drafted by the NHL from the Seibu Prince Rabbits of the ALIH, Hiroyuki Miura by the Montreal Canadiens in 1992 and Yutaka Fukufuji, by the Kings. "Rabbits" is not a comic sports team name as it's understood that rabbits are good fighters, as that's what's done inside burrows and warrens.
Ah, well. This great adventure movie, Dersu Uzala, won an Academy Award for 1975, it's directed by the great Akira Kurosawa, and I seem to remember it playing at the Avon Cinema on Thayer Street in Providence, near here, for months, at the time. The Avon is a repertory cinema. This movie is at Netflix.
This movie brings back the power of the 1970s, as also seen in movies like Born Free, The Parent Trap and in record albums like Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. That spirit of the 70s is a precious thing.
In 1975, Asia was very, very busy, building what today is Sony, Hyundai, Taiwan Semicondutor, Lenovo, the Malaysian High-Tech Corridor, Shin and more. American concepts of gung-ho boy scoutism were important insofar as in the American mind, they were linked to concepts of Asia, concepts which are present in this film. Movies give energy, and it's a good movie, rated G, that shows what life is like between Russian army surveyors and East Asian Sibieran hunters, without going into any detail whatsoever in regards to various issues which seem more important nowadays, issues such as the strong links between Tibetan religion and Mongolian religion, to name one. These links, links of religious identity, play an important role in East Asian history, especially as pertains to ideas of civilization and living a meaningful life.
To speak in terms of sports, the culture of the 1970s is like adding a lot of energy to a system, a concept that is important in diode study - the erroneous theory of life in this case being something like: "If one pours energy into a system, the system will improve." In the case of men walking through Siberia for months on end, this theory goes very far past the obvious counterconcept: "One should organize one's thoughts." If a baseball team simply gets pumped beyond pumped, one ends up so unbelivably stoked that one forgets about the sudoku.
..................................................
In Bring the Noise, Public Enemy raps:
"Never badder than bad cos the brother is madder than mad at the fact that's corrupt like a senator --- Soul on a roll but you treat it like soap on a rope cos the beats and the lines are so dope --- Listen for lessons inside music that the critics are all blasting me for..."
Listen for lessons inside music....indeed. There is so much more positivity than meets the eye, so much more one wanted to say, the music can carry it well. So one should know. It is easy to make props and movie scenes to convey information, by making stuff that looks like words, it adds grandeur, or pathos, or detail, etc. Akira Kurosawa did a lot of work in developing cinema in East Asia, figuring out what the audience wanted to see in terms of dictionary mise en scene. If the viewer finds him or herself getting high on life by watching a Japanese movie, I would suggest that the viewer might as well look into this book instead; I mean, it seems obvious to me.
...........................................................
Ginseng
There is a good scene that involves people talking about harvesting ginseng. If one wants to buy some Northeast Asian ginseng, it is available at H-Mart on the East Coast and K-Grocer on the West Coast.
Hockey
And how is Northeast Asia doing to-day? Here is the Wikipedia article link for Northeast Asia's professional hockey league: Asia League Ice Hockey
Siberia: Hockey, two flags and a metallurgy facility.
..............................................................
Two Japanese-born players have been drafted by the NHL from the Seibu Prince Rabbits of the ALIH, Hiroyuki Miura by the Montreal Canadiens in 1992 and Yutaka Fukufuji, by the Kings. "Rabbits" is not a comic sports team name as it's understood that rabbits are good fighters, as that's what's done inside burrows and warrens.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Summer Omnibus of Mild Distraction
Pulse
Pulse is another great movie, from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, director of Bright Dreams, reviewed a few days ago. There is a lot of industrial imagery, not very alienating, that is easy to compare to the cover art of Zen Arcade in its nature. Bright Dreams ended with an image that could be desribed as "descriptive of appropriate teenage male behaviour as interpreted by the Minneapolis music community". I was thinking about Soul Asylum's Runaway Train sometime during this movie. It's all very modern and appropriate. Made in 2001, available at Netflix' Watch Now.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa has a name, 黒沢 清, the Kurosawa is the same as Akira Kurosawa, no relation. Kurosawa is "black water" and Kiyoshi is "clear". Do you like the song "Black Water" by Brian Eno on Before and After Science? Akira Kurosawa's name is 黒澤 明, or "black water" and "bright". It's the same name as Minnesota, and one supposes that being born in 1955 and growing up liking American movies, one might naturally as an art student wonder about Akira Kurosawa and what it had to to with America. Maybe Vincent Spano thought about the nation of Vietnam while he was growing up. I don't know. My name means "European Drugs" in Chinese; I can tell you that Bayer aspirin is a good thing to have around the house if one is a workaholic. I can also tell you that from my experience of taking two valium, it's like drinking 4 beers w/o feeling dehydrated after you sober up, that arid zoned out feeling that comes w/beer. Don't drink and drive.
For some reason, from knowing people from Minnesota, I am familiar with Minnesota. I am familiar with Soul Asylum, The Replacements, Prince, Morris Day and the Time, Purple Rain, Husker Du, The Cows and more. Garrison Keillor, Bob Dylan. It's a great state, Al Franken should be a great senator in 2008. From working on the Wikipedia, I can tell you it's a fact that there are a lot of famous people from this place.
Living near the coast in New England, the sky is often cool and gray white in the summer; Tokyo is similar.
Rx Dill
Pulse is another great movie, from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, director of Bright Dreams, reviewed a few days ago. There is a lot of industrial imagery, not very alienating, that is easy to compare to the cover art of Zen Arcade in its nature. Bright Dreams ended with an image that could be desribed as "descriptive of appropriate teenage male behaviour as interpreted by the Minneapolis music community". I was thinking about Soul Asylum's Runaway Train sometime during this movie. It's all very modern and appropriate. Made in 2001, available at Netflix' Watch Now.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa has a name, 黒沢 清, the Kurosawa is the same as Akira Kurosawa, no relation. Kurosawa is "black water" and Kiyoshi is "clear". Do you like the song "Black Water" by Brian Eno on Before and After Science? Akira Kurosawa's name is 黒澤 明, or "black water" and "bright". It's the same name as Minnesota, and one supposes that being born in 1955 and growing up liking American movies, one might naturally as an art student wonder about Akira Kurosawa and what it had to to with America. Maybe Vincent Spano thought about the nation of Vietnam while he was growing up. I don't know. My name means "European Drugs" in Chinese; I can tell you that Bayer aspirin is a good thing to have around the house if one is a workaholic. I can also tell you that from my experience of taking two valium, it's like drinking 4 beers w/o feeling dehydrated after you sober up, that arid zoned out feeling that comes w/beer. Don't drink and drive.
For some reason, from knowing people from Minnesota, I am familiar with Minnesota. I am familiar with Soul Asylum, The Replacements, Prince, Morris Day and the Time, Purple Rain, Husker Du, The Cows and more. Garrison Keillor, Bob Dylan. It's a great state, Al Franken should be a great senator in 2008. From working on the Wikipedia, I can tell you it's a fact that there are a lot of famous people from this place.
Living near the coast in New England, the sky is often cool and gray white in the summer; Tokyo is similar.
Rx Dill
In boring summer months, Americans use dill in the food, in potato salad, dill pickles, et cetera. Sugar cookies are for December, and this green page is MTV in its nature rather than Hallmark.
Studying acupuncture is a good substitue for the overuse of dill and other summer foods. There are up to 1000 acupuncture points, all with names. If one is a body-minded person, a medical student, just into one's health, all these points and names and diagrams are as interesting as baseball.
The art on the picture is appropriate for if one is weary of "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet" and "the good old summertime". Too much lemonade, too much Budweiser. "I'm so bored with the USA - but what can I do?"
African website
In 2005 Chinese companies signed a lot of long-term supply contracts with Sonangol, the Anglolan oil company. In 2006 Angola surpassed Saudi Arabia to take the position of China's number one importer, this is a good thing for Angola, selling is hard work, like going out to Fenway with one's Italian ice cart and selling out in 45 minutes and going in to see the game. This story and more at www.cabc.org.cn, China's new big China Africa Business portal, in Chinese and English.
Maps
Teenagers sometimes worry about their employment future. If there is some shortage of problems in this world, I haven't heard about it. Making these new Wikipedia maps was good work and good practice.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Red Dwarf at Netflix' Watch Now
Well, everybody knows how the shows at BBC are supposed to be better, based on the opinion of National Public Radio. It is difficult to verify this theory. Most often one is disappointed. Except, this one is pretty good, it belongs in NBC's Thursday Night lineup with The Office and My Name is Earl. It's integrated, to boot.
Monday, June 4, 2007
All New Conversation Topics
I put these up to see how they look in public, for any potential readership that would be interested, to take a look. New material needs to be processed, ruled out, antecedents and precedents sorted through; beer, coffee, food, sleep. If it's funny it's funny. There is a lot of source material like "Word Oceans" from the year 200, books with 22,000 volumes from the Tang Dynasty, the crest of invention in newspapers and journals in 2007, this blog, other blogs, et cetera.
The words that have been chosen for all these places extantly, the choices are excellent, very interesting, I've learned a lot. I've been marinating in this European American stew for hundreds of generations, I thought it was a good idea to toss my two cents in. Not to mention, all Chinese place names have nicknames that people actually use. We've got the Big Apple and the Sunshine State, we've also got Shaky Town and the Keystone State, names that don't get much run outside their sector of people. Think of a name for your state or town. Jim Rome's a good source; the ATL, Crapchester, Bugaha, he's very good, one wants to figure it out in a foreign language, if possibe.
All for the sake of Global Integration. That's a good name for a company, better than Accountable Finance.
I know readers can't start with this, think about Coca Cola, Panasonic and Excedrin. Starbucks. Green Bay Packers. The ATL. Flavor Flav.
The big plus sign, which means "ten" and has Judeochristianesque overtones; and the confident happy baka guy, are two good themes to rely on. RI means Rhode Island.
Still haven't figured out New Jersey.
The words that have been chosen for all these places extantly, the choices are excellent, very interesting, I've learned a lot. I've been marinating in this European American stew for hundreds of generations, I thought it was a good idea to toss my two cents in. Not to mention, all Chinese place names have nicknames that people actually use. We've got the Big Apple and the Sunshine State, we've also got Shaky Town and the Keystone State, names that don't get much run outside their sector of people. Think of a name for your state or town. Jim Rome's a good source; the ATL, Crapchester, Bugaha, he's very good, one wants to figure it out in a foreign language, if possibe.
All for the sake of Global Integration. That's a good name for a company, better than Accountable Finance.
I know readers can't start with this, think about Coca Cola, Panasonic and Excedrin. Starbucks. Green Bay Packers. The ATL. Flavor Flav.
The big plus sign, which means "ten" and has Judeochristianesque overtones; and the confident happy baka guy, are two good themes to rely on. RI means Rhode Island.
Still haven't figured out New Jersey.
电 = Electric, 贝 = $$
They say 50 square kilometers of this could power Australia. That's a piece of land that measures 5 kilometers by 10 kilometers. Or is it 500 square kilometers. A piece of land measuring 50 kilometers by 10 kilometers? I don't remember. I do know that I am sick of people whining about hydro, solar, wind, tidal, and especially geothermal, apparently most abandoned oil wells in the US have geothermal potential. Just build as much of this as possible, it just doesn't matter, the world is hungry for power.
My hometown is small and has two major electrical generating facilities, I have had the opportunity to think about this issue. Also, I'm from "oil money"; my grandfather wore a hard hat at a Shell terminal for 40 years.
==============================================
It's pretty easy to drop cable underwater, like between Connecticut and Long Island. Here is a partial list:
Baltic-Cable (between Germany and Sweden)
Basslink (between Victoria, Australia and Tasmania, Australia)
Cross-Skagerrak (between Norway and Denmark)
Cross Sound Cable (between New York and Connecticut, USA)
Estlink (between Estonia and Finland)
Fenno-Skan (Powerline between Sweden and Finland)
HVDC Cross-Channel (Submarine cable between UK and France)
HVDC Gotland (the first commercial HVDC submarine cable installation)
HVDC Hokkaido-Honschu (between Hokkaido and Honshu)
HVDC Inter-Island (Power line between the islands of New Zealand)
HVDC Italy-Corsica-Sardinia (SACOI, Submarine cable link between Italy, Corsica and Sardinia)
HVDC Italy-Greece (between Italy and Greece)
HVDC Leyte - Luzon (between Leyte and Luzon)
HVDC Moyle (between Scotland and Northern Ireland)
HVDC NorNed (between Eemshaven and Fedafjord)
HVDC Vancouver Island (link between Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland)
Kii Channel HVDC system (through Kii-channel, Japan)
Kontek (between Germany and Denmark)
Konti-Skan (Powerline between Sweden and Denmark)
Swepol (between Poland and Sweden)
--------------------------------
Aussie Solar + Indonesian HVAC/HVDC = Lots of new utility customers.
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In Africa and India, individual househould photovoltaic is the thing.
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When I'm not staring at ESPN's GameDay Baseball, playing sit and go poker and listening to dub, my internet reading takes me to places such as TREC, which is in the Wikipedia:
Looking at the maps, I would say that electricity and desalination are two interrelated topics.
The big box is how much land it would take for world electricity. The smallest box is just for Germany. The middle box is EU-25.
In America, the oil is located in Republican territory: Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains area. Houston is the center. Think for a second: if it was in Vermont, no one would ever complain about the oil companies. Roustabouts and refinery men would come out of Boston, Montreal and Brooklyn. The Beaumont Triangle would be on the coast of Maine, and up on the St Laurence Seaway. "In NFL action, the Boston Oilers host the Houston Balers, Sunday at 4:15 PM." It's a different world.
So in England, France, China et cetera, the oil is not necessarily in Chinese Texas or British Alaska. This Republican ownership of the oil industry has caused no end of trouble in the USA. The point of it is that non-GOP oil sites on the internet are perfectly sanguine about our solar future, no trash-talking whatsoever. www.oilandgas.com is the link, I think.
So build as much capacity as possible. Build build build. If in the near future, 1 billion new air conditioners are installed, the power will definitely not go to waste.
This is a tank farm for a medium-sized oil and coal powered electrical plant, I've ridden by this a thousand times. This one might need some upkeep.
This is Manhattan in the winter. Brrrr.Desalination
The only problem with an idea like this, is that if there's no money in it, people just won't be interested.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Bright Future
Dear fans of Law and Order, this is an NYPD Blue, and because it's a movie, there is more to it, the resolution of the event continues long after you've watched for an hour, looking, of course, at what it was that got some of the people involved in the case involved in the case to begin with; the case involves two young men. The story is at Bright Future's English Wikipedia article. It was made in 2003 and is available on Netflix' Watch Now and Queue.
It is very cool, in this movie, how an elder male borrows a metal cd from some young people and then socializes with them briefly - things do go wrong, but for different reasons, and it's quite sincere.
There is a cult or cults in Japan, similiar to the famous Aum Shinrikyo, that like to drive around with lots of white tape on their windshields, forming a big crosswork pattern. I used to get Asian channels when I had cable. It has something to do with Asian newspapers, I guess, the way words are typeset in a horizontal vertical grid pattern. I saw a lot of stone brick walls in northeast Asia which were bricklaid diagonally, as this wall seems to hold together better in an earthquake. I am not sure what these cults are trying to say, but at any rate, this movie features something that reminded me of the windshield tape, and it is kind of a puzzle, plus, it is very interesting to boot, it has to do with perception, I guess. Don't worry, this guy's not in a cult.
Asian Sausage
Didya ever wonder about how fries go so perfect with burgers at Burger King and McDonald's? And how Italian sausage goes perfect in lasanga and pasta sauce? And what's the deal with turkey and stuffing? Well, if one has ever shopped at the Asian supermarket and seen the sausage, it is positively uncanny - amazing - how much of that sausage one can eat with just plain boiled rice.
NYPD Crew
As far as tv and movies are concered, there is more one can do with a movie's timeframe, and in regard to episodes of a television show like Blue, which are produced every week. Pictures of houses and stuff in Tokyo, I worked there for a year, it looks like what I see; that's what I saw. It puts me in mind of cliche stuff I saw in New York when I worked in that city:
1 I went to a sandwich lunch place to get something, it wasn't a diner, a little more upscale, on Amsterdam behind Columbia, a few blocks down. Kind of an Italian place, it was really busy, lots of people, drinking coffee, picking up lunch, I just sat and waited for my order. The cashier said something to a customer, something like "57", I didn't notice, and a minute later, sure enough, a really complicated turkey club sandwich appeared on the to go counter, avocado and dressing and something on the side. The cashier had only been working there for a couple of weeks, and she asked the sandwich maker, which one is this, and he looked and then started the explanation, "You know you have to know what you're doing with this, we can't just make a lot of these, what are we going to do with it, et cetera.." So they just put the sandwich aside.
2 I am walking through the Times Square area at about 2 AM, just got off of a bus or a train, I am walking to the subway, it's a nice summer night. I am an Ironweed when it comes to walking around, I stay out of trouble; it's all I do; don't worry about me, exploration is my metier. But, it was some kind of movie cliche, a cop was walking with a tourist along 42nd Street, and all I heard was "So where are you from?" - "Ohio".
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Electric Shadows
梦影童年
Set in modern-day Beijing and 1970s Ningxia, director Xiao Jiang's debut feature explores the power of movies in launching dreams and creating memories. After a bicycle collision leaves Mao Dabing (Xia Yu) with a lump on his head, he promises Ling Ling (Qi Zhongyang), the girl he hit, that he'll care for her fish while she's recuperating. When he stumbles across her diary, he learns the truth about her past -- which rekindles his love of cinema. - Netflix
Check Plus Plus Plus. This is a big movie, don't miss it, but here is some information anyway.
Leave it to Beaver moves to the big city, this movie has a bit of the production value of a Chinese continuation of main-line Korean romantic comedy (KORROMCOM), movie continues like Will and Grace chugging V-8 instead of their regular absinthe and cream, changes over into a 1970s story, at least that's what it reminded me of, and it gets kind of serious, more than sentimental and interesting. I'm not saying anything political here, but "Young Mao" is kind of a great guy.
To be perfectly ridiculous, in terms of rock, if Kansas had lyrics that seemed a little more complicated, like Rush, then what would be the name of that band? Ottawa, Manitoba? Ugh, there's no such band, Ningxia is more like Canada and East Oregon, and it seems to be warm there, cotton is grown.
Anyway, near the end, there is something easy to miss, this woman is into movies, someone is playing a video at her apartment, there is an old scene of a young woman feeding fish paste to her bird, singing a song, apparently in order to give the bird more of a croaking voice, a voice like Humphrey Bogart, I suppose it's funny.
There is a lot in this, it is not fatiguing, it is easy to deal with and it moves along comfortably, it is made for a wide audience. Walt Disney made movies of mice, ducks and dogs, this is about people instead. If G didn't mean 'idiotic', I suppose it might get a G rating. 'Electric Shadows' means 'Movies' in Chinese. This movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2004.
Set in modern-day Beijing and 1970s Ningxia, director Xiao Jiang's debut feature explores the power of movies in launching dreams and creating memories. After a bicycle collision leaves Mao Dabing (Xia Yu) with a lump on his head, he promises Ling Ling (Qi Zhongyang), the girl he hit, that he'll care for her fish while she's recuperating. When he stumbles across her diary, he learns the truth about her past -- which rekindles his love of cinema. - Netflix
Check Plus Plus Plus. This is a big movie, don't miss it, but here is some information anyway.
Leave it to Beaver moves to the big city, this movie has a bit of the production value of a Chinese continuation of main-line Korean romantic comedy (KORROMCOM), movie continues like Will and Grace chugging V-8 instead of their regular absinthe and cream, changes over into a 1970s story, at least that's what it reminded me of, and it gets kind of serious, more than sentimental and interesting. I'm not saying anything political here, but "Young Mao" is kind of a great guy.
To be perfectly ridiculous, in terms of rock, if Kansas had lyrics that seemed a little more complicated, like Rush, then what would be the name of that band? Ottawa, Manitoba? Ugh, there's no such band, Ningxia is more like Canada and East Oregon, and it seems to be warm there, cotton is grown.
Anyway, near the end, there is something easy to miss, this woman is into movies, someone is playing a video at her apartment, there is an old scene of a young woman feeding fish paste to her bird, singing a song, apparently in order to give the bird more of a croaking voice, a voice like Humphrey Bogart, I suppose it's funny.
There is a lot in this, it is not fatiguing, it is easy to deal with and it moves along comfortably, it is made for a wide audience. Walt Disney made movies of mice, ducks and dogs, this is about people instead. If G didn't mean 'idiotic', I suppose it might get a G rating. 'Electric Shadows' means 'Movies' in Chinese. This movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2004.
Suzhou River (movie)
Sounds like a communist movie. When MAD TV makes dramas instead of comedy, is what it looks like instead.
The gritty realism is good for baseball season, getting sick of thinking about sitting in Anaheim California during playoff season. It's like Buddhism has arrived at ITV, if one ever watches that cable channel, Steve Buscemi, Vince Vaughn and Karen O join Entourage. Baseball is so great, the whole idea of it, it's made for everybody, including grandma and grandpa, and it also gets to feel like being high in the month of July. Oliver Stone, Martin Scorcese, Vince Vaughn, MAD tv, its the freely available antidote, baseball gets to be difficult if one is happy all the time. One can't get sober if one didn't drink beer the night before, and vice versa. Chicken soup for the soul? Maybe in November. What one needs now is coleslaw.
Shanghai and New York; living in Southcoast New England, looking at pictures on the web, Sao Paolo looks like this too.
Movie made in 2000, with Chinese, Dutch and German money, found it at Netflix.
Interview
Interviewer: So, Mr Accountable, what do you look for in a woman?
Mr Accountable: Scholarship.
.
.
.
.
.
Pictures:
1 Buffalo Grass Vodka from Poland. It's got a long strand of buffalo grass, or bison grass, in the bottle. If one has ever gone looking around in North Korean websites, sooner or later one finds the snake vodka, with a real adder pickled in it. How'd you like to work on that farm? Buffalo grass vodka provides a soothing, powerful alternative.
2 A nice street, just off the main road, Anytown, Asia. I went looking for the picture of Dropkick Murphys in front of Amvets hall off of Do or Die, couldn't find it, for the similar idea. There are a lot of signs in Asia, I guarantee it. Doing ok with finding one's way is like street hockey, all one wants to do is practice.
The gritty realism is good for baseball season, getting sick of thinking about sitting in Anaheim California during playoff season. It's like Buddhism has arrived at ITV, if one ever watches that cable channel, Steve Buscemi, Vince Vaughn and Karen O join Entourage. Baseball is so great, the whole idea of it, it's made for everybody, including grandma and grandpa, and it also gets to feel like being high in the month of July. Oliver Stone, Martin Scorcese, Vince Vaughn, MAD tv, its the freely available antidote, baseball gets to be difficult if one is happy all the time. One can't get sober if one didn't drink beer the night before, and vice versa. Chicken soup for the soul? Maybe in November. What one needs now is coleslaw.
Shanghai and New York; living in Southcoast New England, looking at pictures on the web, Sao Paolo looks like this too.
Movie made in 2000, with Chinese, Dutch and German money, found it at Netflix.
Interview
Interviewer: So, Mr Accountable, what do you look for in a woman?
Mr Accountable: Scholarship.
.
.
.
.
.
Pictures:
1 Buffalo Grass Vodka from Poland. It's got a long strand of buffalo grass, or bison grass, in the bottle. If one has ever gone looking around in North Korean websites, sooner or later one finds the snake vodka, with a real adder pickled in it. How'd you like to work on that farm? Buffalo grass vodka provides a soothing, powerful alternative.
2 A nice street, just off the main road, Anytown, Asia. I went looking for the picture of Dropkick Murphys in front of Amvets hall off of Do or Die, couldn't find it, for the similar idea. There are a lot of signs in Asia, I guarantee it. Doing ok with finding one's way is like street hockey, all one wants to do is practice.
Friday, June 1, 2007
World Cinema vs One Life To Live
This makes sense: The day an NBA player is drafted off of a high school intramural team is the day I will prop up my feet and start sorting through Hollywood movies. The Chinese word for "machine" is the same as the word for "airplane" - I guess airplanes are important, for world peace, and integration and all. And the word "money" is like slang for a computer, the internet is important too. The Blue and Gray Bowl? The Police Athletic League? Wasn't high school sports invented to deal with gang violence? It might be ok to think of our world as a big interscholastic league, maybe it's time to get on the bus and head on out, competition breeds excellence, or else what are you practicing for, something to do with world peace. It's a classic sports story, "Coach saw me playing intramural basketball and asked me to try out for the team." -- "Glad that you're here."
Not to be a bitchy man, recent North American movies I would put on my big list of movies that don't suck include:
Dodgeball
Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
Blades of Glory - haven't seen it yet
Brain Candy
Afro Punk
Margaret Cho
And maybe you work with a bunch of dudes; it's just not much of a challenge to change the channel when you feel like it - 24, Simpsons, NYPD Blue...
Not to be a bitchy man, recent North American movies I would put on my big list of movies that don't suck include:
Dodgeball
Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
Blades of Glory - haven't seen it yet
Brain Candy
Afro Punk
Margaret Cho
And maybe you work with a bunch of dudes; it's just not much of a challenge to change the channel when you feel like it - 24, Simpsons, NYPD Blue...
4
An unexpected encounter between three strangers in a Moscow bar prompts outlandish tales of their prominent careers -- far removed from the mundane day-to-day routine. Once they depart the late-night session of spinning stories, each of them return to their harsh realities in a dark and industrial Russian landscape. Ilya Khrzhanovsky's controversial film explores existential ideas about repetition with a surreal and disturbing cinematic eye. - Netflix "Watch Now"
Nice title. Go ahead and watch it, what do I care, it's a good idea to do so, made last year.
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