Just another WordPress site

Author: ABQChristopher

  • [UPDATED] my first haircut in 13 years [fka before and after september 6, 2007]

    [original version of this post made on dec 4, 2007…]

    0212-2006-091848.jpg   0212-2006-091837.jpg
    dscn8004.JPG

    dsci2210.JPG   dsci2212.JPG

    and here is a video of the actual moment of the hugely controversial event…

    this is october of 2008…
    topheroct2008

    and a vanity shot taken in march of 2008…
    tophervanityshot2008march7

  • a tour of my desktop

    (originally posted on Flickr – but, i wanted it here, too…)

    my awesome desktop :)

    (click the pic to view original size)

    first i want to point out that this is on a 42" lcd hdtv in the living room and i use a wireless kb and mouse…

    second, pretty much everything you see is Yahoo! Widgets, Rainmeter, ObjectDock, and Stickies… if you want your desktop like mine, just google those names…

    on the left is our budget for the month using Stickies, but, if you look, it is a bit transparent and you will see it is actually the top sticky atop a few others, but this is the only open one – they roll up… (i hide windows desktop icons under my sticky notes…) you can see i have another little note in the middle of the screen, at the top…
    beneath the budget are a couple icons of stuff i need to do – check out the PlayOn app, put Iron Man on my mom’s psp, etc…. it’s sorta’ my to-do stack… and the bottom left hand corner – that little blue thing – i can drag a file onto that and it will auto-magically upload it to the ‘stuff’ directory on my website…

    ok, at the bottom edge is ObjectDock – ya’ know, like the dock on a mac… it is hidden until i hover my mouse at the bottom of the screen and, as my mouse moves, the icons under it enlarge… in this pic, i clicked on ‘APPS’ and it opened the assortment of apps i keep handy… not pictured is the other ObjectDock, which i have set up as the system tray/task bar – it’s hidden on the left… i have used ObjectDock (paid version) for years and can’t live without it… it does many more tricks i won’t get into here…

    ok, the news headlines are Rainmeter – which is like a widget engine, but not for the faint-of-heart – it is very complex to customize and you need to have some coding knowledge… as you see, i have rss feeds from home-barista for coffee geek discussions, playstation lifestyle for ps3/psp stuff and google for "real" news…

    in the middle, since i love love love photography, a Yahoo Widget showing recent popular photos posted on DeviantArt on the left and another Yahoo Widget on the right with recent popular photos posted to Flickr… they are set to change every few minutes… i leave room since the photos come in all shapes and sizes… both have very impressive customization settings as far as what kind of content to show… for instance, the deviantart widget, of course, has tons more types of art than photography and the flickr widget can show your own stream, favorites, photos from groups and/or contacts, and you can even use it to upload to flickr…

    at the top, pretty obvious, Yahoo Widgets for date/time, cpu usage, and upload/download speed…

    which brings us to the right edge… i have been a webcam junkie for years and this is a Yahoo Widget called WebImages – several instances of it, of course… i have used several methods for desktop webcam monitoring and this one blows all the others away… the depth of options and customization can be intimidating at first and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it is SOOOO worth it… the radar is the local weather radar, of course… the rest are cams that update once a minute… i have each set up to sort of a theme and each contains more than one cam – when it updates, it switches to the next cam that one monitors… for instance, the top is local – alternating between a cam in cloudcroft and one in las cruces… the next down is home – albuquerque – four different cams and once a minute, it shows a different view… the next three are assorted cool/interesting places – cams in las vegas, italy, california, and others – all three contain a list of all my favorite cams around the world and, once a minute (or whatever i choose to set it to from once a second to once a day) it cycles to the next cam in its list… or, if one of them has something really interesting going on, i stop the cycling and set it to update in near-real-time and each one has a button when you mouse over it to enlarge it as big as you like… you can hit another button to save the current image, even…
    but, now i’m gushing ;P
    oh, and the very bottom one is NASATV – the widget can stream the video, but, i just have it set to show a still every 15 seconds…

    anyway… that’s my desktop…

  • recipe – chicken green chile casserole

    This is a recipe I got from Chris Dunn – @Thorobredz on twitter.
    I don’t claim to be any great cook, so I’m just going to relate what I did and the reader can adjust to their preferences, rather than give instructions on what “should” be done.

    This is pretty simple – just layering some ingredients then baking it: chicken, green chiles, refried beans, and cheese. The layers will be separated by flour tortillas.

    I started with about a pound-and-a-half of cooked chicken.

    I heated up 2 cans of vegetarian refried beans and diced almost a whole onion and mixed into it, plus quite a bit of granulated garlic and some salt. Since I didn’t season the chicken, I was counting on the beans to carry most of the seasoning. If you want to do it that way, add whatever seasonings you like here. Though, most people would probably just/also season the chicken.

    Obviously, fresh chiles would have been best but we are out, so I used two 13oz. containers of Bueno mild chopped green chiles (frozen vegetables section of the grocery store), which are actually very good. If there were no women and children eating it, I would have used their ‘Autumn Roast’ which is really good but fairly hot. I drained as much juice out of these as I could. The juice can make the tortillas soggy, BUT the juice adds a lot of flavor, so decide for yourself which way you want to try it.

    I used a mixture of some pepper jack cheese i grated and some shredded “fiesta blend” cheese from a bag, as this was what I had on hand. If I had to guess, I would say it added up to four cups.

    For the final ingredients prep, I toasted four burrito-size flour tortillas.

    Time to build it.

    This was four layers, so, I used a fourth of the ingredients in each layer.
    Last time I made this, I also added a final (fifth) tortilla on top and cheese on top of that. I didn’t do that this time – if you do, you’ll obviously need some more cheese.

    I used a little non-stick spray stuff in a casserole dish, 10×10 and 4 deep.
    I started by laying a tortilla in the bottom then spread some refried beans, then the chile, then the chicken, then the cheese. I shredded the chicken with my fingers as I went, btw. But, last time, i just diced it. I think we all liked it better shredded.

    Needless to say, just keep doing that – we found the amount of ingredients distributed really well into four layers. The toasting of the tortillas helps them to not be as soggy.
    For the top, i diced up maybe a quarter each of a red, yellow, and orange bell pepper, mainly for looks.

    I baked it for about half an hour at around 350-400 (this stupid oven doesn’t hold consistent temp!), covered.

    BTW, I used a very sharp knife to slice it when done so the layers didn’t squish. And be sure to slice thoroughly so it is all seperated and you don’t get surprises when you go to serve it. And wiggle it a bit in case the bottom tortilla stuck.

    I served it with guacamole, sour cream, shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, and some chips on the side.

    I am thinking I could do some nice things with rice in there next time or on the side.

    Now, that whole thing took me a couple hours to make (incuding bake time) but I am notoriously slow so I would say most people would take an hour.

    I hope I didn’t leave anything out.
    If I had known I was gonna’ post this, I would’ve taken a pic 😛

  • Movies I watched – April 2009

        Didn’t get a lot of movie time this past month, but, here’s some thoughts on what we did get to see, in reverse chronological order.
        
        
    Battlestar Galactica
        I just wanted to make a few comments on this before I get into the actual movies. Terra and I have watched the pilot mini-series and the first four episodes in this last couple weeks and I love it so far. I grew up on sci-fi, but, I think sci-fi really changed in the early 90s or so. I watched the first season of ST:TNG back in the day but then lost interest in Trek altogether – especially when the god-awful fifth movie came out (followed by the god-awful sixth and god-awful seventh, etc.). But I still love the first four films and I can sit through most of the old episodes. So, as they say, “Kirk is my captain”. And I have tried various sci-fi stuff over the years and just have seen very little that is any good, especially on tv. Most sci-fi seems to have turned into action, popcorn stuff in a future/tech setting, but, little actual thoughtful stuff. Sci-fi is supposed to be about IDEAS. Good science fiction leaves you thinking and discussing long after you have seen it. 1954’s The Day The Earth Stood Still is a good example, 1982’s Blade Runner is one of my favorites, and a good recent example would be 1999’s The Matrix. Who am I to define what sci-fi is? Good question. So, perhaps all I am doing is referring to a sub-genre.
        Anyway, what I have seen of BSG so far is great sci-fi; sci-fi as I understand great sci-fi to be. And just great in general. Great premise, great stories, great characters. And I really love the sound design. I am really looking forward to seeing more and I already have so many questions.
        
        
    Primer
        Speaking of great sci-fi…
        I watched this in bed on my PSP. This is my fourth time or so to do this – I still haven’t watched it any other way. I love love love this movie. I love the small scale, just a couple of guys with little lives. And, made for $7,000, this truly is a ‘garage movie’. And sci-fi of concepts, no special effects needed. I also love the way it is filmed and acted – I always feel like I am just looking in, the acting is so natural I forget I am watching performances.
        This is on my mental list of greatest science fiction films ever made. And such a unique twist on the whole time travel concept.
        
        
    Vanilla Sky
        Wow, um, what to say. I remember loving this movie – watched it several times with my wife and liked it enough to listen to the commentary a couple times. And, Terra had seen it and has been wanting to see it again.
        Well, we didn’t really like it. Not sure why. Though, this was the second in a Cameron Crowe double feature. We watched Almost Famous, followed by this. Maybe it was too late at night to appreciate, maybe it couldn’t measure up to Almost Famous. Dunno’. Anyway, something just didn’t click. We both felt it took too long to tell the story. Just sitting there waiting for the surprise ending and not really getting much else from it. I have no idea how this happened.
        But, I want to give it another chance some time.
        
        
    Almost Famous
        I didn’t know if Terra would like this one or not, so, I went easy on her and started off with the much shorter theatrical cut.
        I knew I loved this movie but I had forgotten how much. This easily is in my top twenty of all time and I have really been thinking it deserves top ten placement.
        This is real comfort movie material here. And it is all about the people. I want to spend more time with these people. (Maybe, like is said of the main character, they make me feel cool?) I was absolutely smitten with this film every moment it was on and I converted the director’s cut plus commentary and put it on my PSP the very next day so I can spend some real quality, personal time with it. Speaking of the commentary – this film has the best. commentary. ever. At least, if you love the film.
        I have seen it many times and, again, I remember loving it, but, anytime I have considered watching it in the last year or so, I kept finding myself trying to remember WHY I loved it and couldn’t really think of anything. Like, maybe it was just the sort of thing I was into back then. I finally chose it one night because Terra loves Frances McDormand and I thought she’d love her in this one. And I expected to like it, but, I was just totally carried along the whole time.
        I have that little list of ten movies I can’t live without on my sidebar, and I may very well bump one to add this one to the list.

         By the way, see also August Rush for a movie about the love of music.
        
        
    JFK
        This was the director’s cut we watched and boy was I sorry. She had never seen this film and even the theatrical cut is just way too long. But, she loves mysteries and didn’t know much about the whole Kennedy assassination thing and I grew up in the Dallas area, so, I’ve heard it all. The problem is that Oliver Stone always takes forever to tell a story. I can’t even say it is always worth the journey. I think Natural Born Killers is and this one probably is. Obviously, you come to this one for the last forty minutes and have to sit through the first (what feels like) five hours to get to the finale.
        Yes, this is a great film, but I would almost condone invasive studio control over a director’s work in this case 😛
        
        
    Iron Man
        Meh.
        I am biased, I don’t like action movies. Any movie that you can sum up to someone in terms of “this happened then that happened then this happened” etc. is an action flick. I used to have a practice that, whenever I watched a genre film in a genre I was not fond of, I would make it a double feature so I could compare them to each other rather than compare one to a “real movie”. But, even if I had done that and watched this with, say, one of the new Batman movies, Batman would win hands down.
        Tony Stark was an interesting character and was well-acted, but, all that did was point out how everyone else in the movie is a cardboard cut-out. And, the plot was totally color by numbers. You knew the guy in the cave was going to be dead, you knew Jeff Bridges was going to become the bad guy, this is all typical comic book stuff. Then it was combined with typical popcorn flick stuff – action sequences and pratfall humor, etc..
        A genre film is always predictable but tries to tell the story this time around with enough stylistic and interpretive differences to try to be a replacement for the previous versions and perhaps this succeeds somewhat for the superhero movie – I don’t know the genre very well. But that doesn’t make it a good film – it will be forgotten in fifty years, it leaves no legacy, it will not endure. I read Ebert’s review and just couldn’t believe his high praise for it and he even called it one of the best of the year.
        There are much better films out there that tell a story of a bad man becoming a good man and making his wrongs right and no special effects or suspension of disbelief are required. And they WILL endure, so, if you haven’t seen them, that’s ok, they’ll still be around when you are ready.
        
        
    L.A. Story
        There was a day that Terra and I wanted to have a “light movie day”. Nothing deep, nothing to explain or ponder, just entertainment.
        Heh, um, I had a REAL problem finding many like that in my collection. Just to be clear, remember I have a huge LaserDisc collection of all kinds of movies, but most of them are in storage and my DVDs and Blu-Rays are only movies I love. There are plenty of “light” movies in my LD collection.
        Anyway, I love L.A. Story. It is a very romantic love story. But, there is so much more to it – it fits into my category of ‘movies that can’t figure out what they wanted to be’. But, it is another movie I say “watch it until you don’t laugh at the jokes anymore”. Sure, it works great as a comedy (see also American Psycho for a satirical view of L.A. life) but, if you want to get the full impact of the fantasy romantic side of it, watch it until that’s all you see.
        On that note, though, it sort of failed us as a “light” movie because there were more than a few moments that I couldn’t help but pause and call Terra’s attention to something subtle. In that way, Clueless is another ‘see also’ for this one. I know so many teens that love Clueless and don’t seem to see that they are being made fun of. It works so well on the surface level that it is easy to miss the underlying messages.
        There is a scene or two in L.A. Story that seem to be only there so someone could get a cameo (I’m looking at you, Rick-Moranis-as-a-gravedigger scene!), but, there are a couple scenes that are so magical. For instance, when they go for a walk and feel young again, not middle-aged and hopeless, thinking love can never find them again – they now feel so much hope, like they have their whole lives ahead of them all over again. At least, that’s my interpretation of that scene. And I still get teary when she is on the plane to leave and I always hear his words spoken earlier about what he would do if he could to stop her from leaving.
        (I have on my to-do list to make a blog post about movies that make me cry. But not today.)
        
        
    Fletch
        This is just a comfort film. I have seen it more times than I can count since I was a kid. I always love Chevy Chase’s shtick. The story is ok, the acting, whatever – none of it is anything special but I love Chevy Chase in pretty much anything. I can sit through a bad movie if it has Chevy Chase in it and this is probably my favorite.
        BTW, this was the first in our “light movie day”, followed by L.A. Story.
        
        
    The Matrix
        One of the greatest science fiction films ever made and I stand by that ten years after seeing it the first time. And an action move I actually like – the chase scene at the beginning is so exhilarating and a big reason why I got the game Mirror’s Edge – just so I could live something similar. And, I love the visual style of it – I wish I had a poster of the group shot of them behind the phone, the first time they all go into the Matrix.
        My main complaints with this one are as an action film, oddly enough. The fight scenes should have been done by real martial artists. Watch an old Jackie Chan film – these guys move like old men. In fact, Jackie Chan at his age now, moves faster than these young actors.
        But, this one is full of great science fiction, semi-cyberpunk moments and ideas.
        Oh, I almost forgot, this was the new Blu-ray release we watched and, um, WOW! IT looks absolutely stunning.
        
        Too bad they never made any sequels 😛
        
        
    So, that brings this post to this month’s bottom line:
        
    Was Ready To Re-Watch It As Soon As It Was Over: Almost Famous
    Would Rather Re-Watch Any Other Film In This List Than This One: JFK

  • march movies

    i have had this urge lately to blog the movies i watch and do it once a month – not to give detailed reviews or anything, just to log them… since i had this idea late, i’ll start with the movies i watched in march in reverse chronological order…

    Magnolia
    this may very well be my favorite movie i have ever seen… it is so much more than a film – it is an emotional experience…
    i have loved it for years, but, it became even more powerful after being at my father’s side as he suffered a long, horrible death… there are quite a few little details in the film that let me know that pt anderson has lived through watching someone die… what i mean is, there are things i have only seen twice – in this movie and with my father…
    i could go on for hours about this film, but i won’t here – i want this to be a concise recap of the month…

    Breakfast At Tiffany’s
    meh… i liked the character of holly and the performance by audrey hepburn, but, meh…

    Ed Wood
    probably the only tim burton film i genuinely like and i REALLY like it… not a great film – this one is more personal… what i relate to the most is the cast of weirdos around him – it reminds me of certain times in my own life… so, i wouldn’t defend it as a truly good film or try to get anyone else to watch it – it’s one i would keep on my psp and watch alone when i need to be with friends 😛

    The Terminal
    speaking of my psp, i had never seen this one and watched it in bed one night on my psp and really really liked it… sure, there are some problems with it – it’s another i wouldn’t defend as a great film, but, i think this will be a favorite for a long time to come…

    Ringu
    never saw it before – wanted to for a long time… i don’t like horror films, but, this one has influenced so much popular media, it is certainly a relevant film… glad i saw it, doubt i will watch it again…
    oh, but, i still want to see the american version…

    Tristan+Isolde
    second time seeing this one, first time for terra… so much great about it, but so much wrong… so hard to sympathize with the characters’ plight… sure, i understand how they got in this mess, but, they should have done the right thing and therefore, i wasn’t feeling too sympathetic… i think the final third or so of this movie was MUCH better than what came before… it got very emotional for me – i was feeling everything going on…
    btw, i was suspecting while watching it that this was a big summer release, heavily advertised on MTV 😛 i just kept thinking how much teenagers must have loved this one and how it seemed to be made for teenagers…

    The Night of the Comet
    The Night of the Living Dead
    this was a slumber party night double feature…
    night of the comet is a movie i saw countless times as a kid, so, it is indelibly ingrained in my mind… i have every moment of it memorized and know it too well to hate it… a very bad movie, but, the mall scene and the villain thereof were reason enough to watch it with someone who has never seen it…
    as for night of the living dead – haven’t seen it since i was a kid and feel i didn’t miss much… but, again, it is a relevant film – starting an entire genre, so, i don’t regret seeing it…
    both were a perfect choice for slumber party night…

    Matrix Revolutions
    i think the first in the trilogy is one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made and the other two are pretty blah… but, i keep coming back to them every few months just to give them another try… i am totally in love with the universe of the film and want to love all three films…

    Delicatessen
    i have loved Amelie for years and had heard good things about this one… um, it didn’t deliver… it was as strange and surreal as i expected, but, it just wasn’t that good… i know i’ll watch it again someday, though…

    Matrix Reloaded
    see above…

    bottom line:
    best i saw this month i had never seen before: The Terminal
    worst i saw this month i had never seen before: probably Ringu

    since i didn’t do posts for february or january and i don’t feel like going back right now, i’ll give the bottom lines for those months, without comments… maybe i’ll come back and do full posts another time…

    february bottom line:
    best: August Rush
    worst: What Lies Beneath
    even better the second time: The Dark Knight
    amazing performance in a blah movie: tie between Capote and Being There
    also loved: Wit, Primer, Rushmore
    still great after all these years: Barefoot in the Park, Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation, Rear Window

    january bottom line:
    best i had never seen: The Darjeeling Limited
    best i saw all month: Lost In Translation
    worst: The Haunting
    awesome beginning, all downhill from there: The Happening
    most surprising disappointment: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (i used to LOVE this one and was so sorry i chose it for our slumber party night – we were bored!)
    much much much better than i remembered: The Incredibles

    ok, let’s do this again next month 🙂

  • twitter is like a text webcam

    back before i came here – back home in albuquerque, in my awesome third-floor apartment with a beautiful view of the mountains (the pic at the top of my website is a photo taken from my balcony/patio) – i had a webcam in my living room… yes, something possessed me to broadcast a view of my living room to the whole world, 24 hours a day… there was even another pointed out my living room window, showing the mountains and i lived right in “balloon alley”, so, the cam also let you see the hot air balloons that floated by every morning, sometimes close enough that i could probably toss the pilots breakfast burritos 😛

    but, i say it was for the whole world to see and, in reality that wasn’t the case… i mean, i’ve had a website for years and very low traffic and i like it that way – i’m not selling anything or benefitting in any way from traffic and it also keeps me off the radar of hackers, spammers and other trouble-makers so there are several reasons why i’m happy with a low traffic site… the main traffic i get – and my webcam got – was friends and family… my dad had a widget on his desktop that showed my living room cam and it meant a lot to him be able to see me on a constant basis… the point is it wasn’t “for the whole world to see”, i knew almost nobody was watching but i did it anyway…
    i have loved webcams for years and to this day, i have a widget on my desktop that displays four cams – i have three set to the only live cams i know of in albuquerque (ever since the wonderful abqcam.com shut down) and one i change – sometimes to the cam that points at a spot at the pier where i used to hang out in Hermosa Beach, California – sometimes to the cam at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas that pans around casinos i used to spend a lot of time at – or just to a cam i come across that is a place i find interesting…

    anyway, i don’t know where my urge comes from to broadcast my life, but i always got a kick out of it… i miss my webcam… i wish i had one now, but it isn’t just my bachelor life on display, i live here with mom and terra and wesley – so, i have to settle for ‘again someday’…

    but, see, that’s where twitter comes in… i’m not so unusual anymore – tons of people are “broadcasting their life for the whole world to see”, so to speak…
    my webcam was an answer to the question “what are you doing right now?”…
    my cam was never off but the software i used had a mode to just take a snap and upload it, rather than have it on all the time… well, twitter is like that snap-not-stream mode…

    twitter is one of those things that someone can describe for an hour to you but until you actually have it, you can’t really see the point… as soon as i was on, i took off and haven’t stopped… it was just the next broadcast medium for me… and i dislike a lot of what twitter has become… for instance, it is very rare i go to the site or use a twitter client — twitter is almost purely a cell phone experience for me… i am following maybe a hundred people and for quite a while just kept changing, every few weeks or so, who i got updates from to my phone… now, i have turned off pretty much everyone except people here in alamogordo — i have every single one of them set to sms delivery (i use the indispensible http://twuzzer.com to keep an eye out for new twitterers in my area)… throughout the day, my phone beeps and there is a twitter and every one of them is local, except for my sis-in-law in vegas and one or two other very infrequent posters…
    remember in The Dark Knight when he had everyone’s cell phone providing surveillance around Gotham? yeah, that’s kinda’ what i’m doing… if a twitterer posts in the alamogordo area, i get it to my phone… and almost no other tweets…
    so, it’s kinda’ like getting webcam snaps from all around alamogordo… that’s why web-only/client-only twitterers are people i can’t relate to… twitter is many things to many people and ok fine, but i would love to see what it would be like if twitter was phone-only… the way they intended it, i suspect… and one reason i like http://zannel.com so much – almost all of the posts are from people’s phones, not the site or a desktop client – and actually delivering answers to the “what are you doing right now?” question… most of the non-local updates i get on my phone are from the handful of people i follow on zannel…

    btw, see, this town is tiny and i’m a big city boy having lived in/around L.A., vegas, dallas, orlando (i loved albuquerque – big enough to have everything but small enough that nothing is more than half an hour away) and i go crazy because there is just nothing at all to do here… so, while i’m here i have lately thought hey, there’s only so many twitterers here – maybe 20 active currently – so, why not continually hear from them what they do? and, sure there are a couple that use twitter to advertise (*spits*) and a few that are what i called above “web-only/client-only” but it is the best chance i have of continually seeing into the lives of a truly diverse cross section of locals… where they go, what they do, etc…. i’m curious… i’ve always loved webcams and now i also love twitter, for the same reasons – when people actually use it that way – as a text webcam…

    i twitter and formerly webcam’ed for those who were curious about me and i love being able to get, in real time, the ‘text webcam snapshots’ from people i’m curious about…

    once my time here is done and i move back to civilization, i’ll change out whose tweets hit my phone to keep my finger on the pulse, as it were, of people in many cities… but, the webcam mentality is my favorite kind of twitterer… tell me where you are right now, what you see and hear, what you’re doing, and i’ll keep doing the same – whether by cam or twitter or whatever comes next…

    [posted from my mint metallic green MotoQ 9c]

  • Follow the music… August Rush

    i just watched it for the first time and wanted to get some thoughts down while the emotional impression is still fresh… i have not read a word about this film, nor did i even know what it was about…

    (btw, i’m typing this up on my phone, which has no cut/paste… not the best way to write, but it’ll have to do and if you continue to read, you’ll have to be ready for some stream-of-consciousness disorganization…)

    i watched this on the recommendation a few months ago of Tara, a good friend whose opinion when it comes to emotional movies i very much trust… she was right about the power of The Notebook so when she said similar things about August Rush, i knew she would be right… and, of course, insisted she not tell me a single thing about it – i just took her word for it…

    but, as i watched, i was doubting my trust in her… it took awhile for me to get sucked in… the film is dreamy – not surreal, but fantasy to be sure and not a strictly straightforward narrative and i was a little confused initially… but, after awhile, i began to see it as more like a dream i was having and stopped trying to keep the story straight and just let it move me – carry me…

    it is a story of a miracle…
    i think that says it best – a miracle happens and this is the telling of the events leading up to it…
    what happens is an impossibility or at least a great improbability… this is a fairy tale, a fable – and any objections to what happened i might have were less important to what it meant and how it made me feel… it is a very emotional film… and the last twenty minutes or so, it just kept repeating in my mind: “follow the music follow the music”… music is the spirituality of the film – the religion of the three key characters… music is the meaning in their lives – not simply the only thing that matters to them, but the only thing that CAN matter, the only thing that is real… and each of them has someone who doesn’t have music the way they do and is trying to harness their music for their own ends… the girl’s father, the guy’s brother, and “Wizard” in the boy’s life… the characters “need music more than food” and each has someone who needs food more than music and has – or tries to have – control… only when each follows the music are they free… alive… and neither of those words describe it – their relationship to music transcends human understanding… it is The Cause, pushing their existance forward… without music, they are just humans… and when they follow the music, they can arrive at what they were meant for…

    and, the movie ends on just the perfect note… the moment of nirvana – of destiny completed – and the mood was not destroyed by words… the writer/director/whoever made the very wise choice to not have anyone say anything… we already knew the facts they would tell each other, so why ruin this flawless moment? we can imagine what happens next but there isn’t even a need to imagine – when people ride off into the sunset, there is no next day, that’s why it’s a romance… their whole life has been leading up to this moment and the maker(s) of the film doesn’t ruin it – you just wake up from this beautiful dream…

    i absolutely must watch this again because i’m not certain how i will feel about it a second time…
    i know the kid’s performance is great, the overall pacing is pretty good, the photography is beautiful, the use of music and sound design was superb (i hope this is available in dts), but as i said, it did take me awhile to get truly sucked in… i said to terra as the credits rolled that it is a flawed masterpiece, but a masterpiece just the same…
    i have been really wanting to see films by female directors after being so moved by Sophia Coppola’s Lost In Translation – knowing that a female director will convey emotion in a completely different way… and this is certainly the most unique film i have seen in years and i truly mean that…
    but i wanted it to make me cry and it didn’t… i wanted it to take my breath away and i had to settle for awe… there were a lot of smiles i had in the third act as i saw it all coming together, but it was undeniably predictable… that is probably the wrong way to say it… the hopes and dreams we share with these three came true! so, no surprise is not a bad thing! but, i knew they would come true and what was amazing was the miraculous ways they did come true… it is a rare film that can make me not only suspend disbelief but put my focus purely on the emotions of the film and this accomplishes it… but i’m almost embarrassed to be so moved when i can think of some of the flaws…

    so what i am hoping for above all else is that i will see nothing but greatness on my next viewing…

    SEE ALSO:
    …Searching For Bobby Fischer for more on people trying to possess someone’s gift
    …A.I.:Artificial Intelligence for another character/performance like the boy

  • people don’t get PlayStation Home

    i am seeing people on twitter continually miss the point or not at all get the point of playstation home…  now, maybe what i take from it isn’t what sony intends, but, here is what i think is the obvious answer…

    i used to play Phantasy Star Online a lot on the Dreamcast…  and, in that game, you had a virtual lobby…  where your character would hang out with other characters, in a virtual environment…  it was like a chat room…  and that was the meeting point for the game…  you would maybe bump into an old friend, and perhaps go into the game environment itself to play…  you would also stand around, maybe asking if anyone had a particular piece of equipment and would like to trade…  there were lots of days i did nothing at all but stand there and watch people run around, watch their conversations – sega even had a rep drop in one day and hold a trivia contest for prizes…  it was just a social hang out that could hold a lot more people than a game room itself could…
    eventually, there were even mini-games and such in the lobbies…

    well, none of the other games i played online had a virtual lobby…  some had a more traditional-style chat room kind of lobby, just lines of test on a screen and people would meet up and organize games, but that wasn’t nearly as cool…  some had no lobby at all…  as i have poked around in the online games for the ps3, none have a virtual lobby…  a couple don’t even have any kind of in-game chat…

    so, that is the answer to me…  playstation home is a virtual lobby for ALL their games…  rather than have a lobby for each game, this one covers all of them…  you can hang out and find people who play the games you do and then, from there, go into the game itself…  no, it’s probably not as quick as pop-in-pop-out like a true lobby is, but, from what i have seen of playstation home (which, admittedly, is little) it is not an entirely inconvenient way to do things…

    i think people are trying to see a whole lot more in there – more to do, even…  and, from what i see, this is sony’s fault and to some extent, their intention…  but, whether it is misconception on my part or everyone else’s, i think the majority of people are missing the usefulness of a virtual lobby for online games and how cool it is that, rather than a great lobby for a game and a not-so-great lobby for another game, there is one lobby to rule them all, so to speak…

    anyway, that’s a thought…

    (btw, i tried to come up with some quick pics of the pso lobbies to show what i meant and didn’t come up with any and didn’t feel like spending a lot of time looking – i assume most people who would be taking the time to read this have some game experience and probably more than mine, so, what i am describing is more than likely not an unknown idea to them…)

    Blogged with the Flock Browser

  • a few thoughts on Being There

    this is one of many movies that, as a self-professed film snob, it is pretty much unforgivable that i have never seen it…

    peter sellers was absolutely amazing – he played the role perfectly every moment, too much would have made us feel he was something less than a person, too little and he would have come across as just disinterested… i poked around a bit at the various things that have been said over the last thirty years about his performance and it has been well-covered, so, i’ll skip right to the stuff i can’t forgive…

    but, before i go on, let me say that i am keeping this film and will surely view it again – but pretty much only for his performance…

    my objections are simple to state – i just didn’t believe it… i didn’t buy it that these people didn’t catch on… is there a reason that the director wanted me to catch on to? maybe, but, if so, it is buried deeper than i was able to look…
    this movie kept calling to mind some cartoon i saw many many years ago… somehow, a dog ends up like president of a company or something… i have scoured the net, trying to find info on this cartoon, hoping to embed/link it here, but i just remember too little… anyway, he is in some kind of power – we are talking probably nearly 20 years ago i saw it, but it was something like he was in the right place at the right time, maybe accidentally got human clothes on him, but one way or another, they made him president, all his growls and barks and grunts somehow twisted by them into what they thought they heard or wanted to hear or whatever… i remember two details clearly – the first is that they ask his name and he growls something that sounds like “rawelf gawagrrr” and they ‘repeat’ back Ralph Gallagher… and the last is when something happens that everyone suddenly figures out his true nature and someone shouting “HE’S A DOG!”… the whole incident is carried along by this device of them misunderstanding what to us are clearly dog noises as mumbled speech and we are laughing at them for not noticing the obvious fact that he is a dog…
    well, in this movie we have the choked “Chance, the gardener” becoming “Chauncey Gardiner” and did the doctor figure it out at the end? seems so… but, there certainly was the attempts at being a whistleblower – not quite a “HE’S A GARDENER!”, but, i just couldn’t get the similarities off my mind… and i saw a cast of fools all focused on a very endearing character who who would have been much better off in a better written movie…

    so, i’m sort of saying that it just kept coming across the same way… like it was intending to be only a comedy… which is a shame, because the first half hour or so, i was totally hooked in… i guess it was when he tried to change the channel on the would-be muggers that i started being concerned…
    which, by the way, i have been thinking… so, he watched tv for all those years but didn’t learn how to use a phone? or that you can’t change the channel on real life?
    ok, so, maybe that means, in his deficiency, he saw it for years but never internalized it… like it was a meaningless blur… he detailed to the two in the beginning his room and bathroom – down to the details of his tub, his toilet, his sink, and showed them his garden and perhaps that was all that was really real to him? the rest was something unreal and so he had no point of reference even with all that input? ok, sure, i could see that… of course, he had tears in his eyes in one of the last scenes… and i’m not going to be too quick to jump to any “well, see, he is now becoming aware of the world” because if he had that ability, one would think he would have clicked into something many years earlier, even if it was only a response to something on tv…

    hmm…
    i just don’t know…
    then, of course, the very last thing that happened and i don’t even have much in the way of theories yet… i’d like to read around what others have said over the years…
    but, since i had a hard time recognizing a pattern pointing to any kind of other meaning, i fear it meant nothing coherent at all…

    i can’t help but think about the meaning of it all, but, i’m not certain that the director deserves for me to think about it… there was so much in there that just seemed to be no deeper than some comic effect… like the bedroom scene – you know, he “likes to watch”… i can’t come up with any reason why that was important – i think it was just meant to be funny… and i kept feeling that way about many other scenes… trying to find some reason to look for meaning and just not finding one…

    i will go so far as to say that i think if peter sellers had not played this role, this would be a completely forgettable movie… i know that’s the case for me anyway…
    say whatever about who or what he was, why he was or why he was the way he was, what it all means, or whatever, i don’t see that it will change my mind that WHAT HAPPENED just is not believable and i find it very hard to be moved by something i cannot believe…

    ok, i am not gonna go back and edit this at all or even re-read it… i keep telling myself that i should force out a couple paragraphs every time i watch a movie and i have to start somewhere and if i go back and read it, i will change things and then decide it was a bad idea to even post – best to wait for a movie i can write something meaningful about or i will add three more paragraphs that are equally disjointed and that will only make it worse, so, i’m just gonna hit that publish button…
    (i’m much fonder of this post…)

    oh, i have had this “see also” thing going for years when i watch a movie, so….

    see also: Meet Joe Black

  • Collapsing into my so-called bed in my…

     
    Collapsing into my so-called bed in my so-called room in this so-called home… Been up about 20 hours – i'll sleep anywhere 😛
    posted by jesusfreakgeek on October 12, 9:39PM on Zannel
    view and comment