Name:William Country:United States State:California Metro:Oakland Birthday:7/8/1980 Gender:Male
Interests:Dancing/Clubbing, Film, Videogames, Literature. Expertise:Wasting time on my hobbies while school work is due. Occupation:Analyst Industry:Construction
Someday, if I or if my future children ever wanted to retrace my life, they can easily do it through the websites I frequent. As of now, my hobbies and interests are: Hanging out with my friends, eating out, traveling, reading, and movies. I have always wanted to measure things in my life and there are no better ways than to use databases online to do it for me. Here's what I have found so far:
So someday if someone wanted to piece my life together, it's not that difficult at all. It'd be great if I was some interesting psychotic murderer. But I'm not, I just read and go out to eat. Perhaps I should tone down the blogging soon. But then again, I still haven't found a good game-rating website for video-games.
One of the things that I enjoy doing is learning the names of songs. I've made it somewhat of a hobby these days, but I don't just try to look up the names of the Top 40 songs on the radio, but actually the names of jingles, beats, overtures, and even music scores. Of the scores that I have taken a liking to, I realize that there is a score of people who has too. I see this because I traverse the YouTube waters for trailers and such from time to time and notice a lot of videos being remixed to these scores. The video-makers milk your sympathy by adding melodramatic music to their movies. Today I've seen the one that trumpets them all! A video from our celebrated radio/TV host Glen Beck. It is his trailer for his march to Washington DC for Americans who want to "Take back America". He states that he will, "bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States, or political parties. We were united as Americans..."
The song is "Requiem for a Dream" by Clint Mansell. It's one of the most over-used songs in making trailers. Well that one, "O Fortuna", "Tear Drop", and "God walking on the face of the waters". And Let's face it, this is totally a piece of propaganda with a political agenda. Today is September 12th, and yesterday was the eight year anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. Like most Americans, we observe, respect, and choose to move forward with our lives. Does uniting America mean condemning the Americans that don't see his point of view? It's sad really, his rally is doing exactly opposite of what it claims to be - it's dividing Americans. This is the same guy that said that America needs another terrorist attack to reunify us. This is the same guy that called Obama a racist. That's particularly funny because Obama's cabinet is predominantly white, he has a white vice president, and he has a white mom and grandmother.
I'm losing my train of thought, but what I want to say is already stated in a more eloquent manner by James Poniewozik on Times.com: "You want to bring back the feeling of national unity and civility, Glenn Beck? You could start by not using this tragedy as your personal political platform."
Lastly, back to the video: The war against Hitler was the moon landing were done by both Democrat presidents, FDR and JFK. Thanks for reminding us that.
I watched the movie "Push" today. It's quite a diamond in the rough for movies, it came our earlier this year but nobody gave it a shot. I think it's too similar to "Jump" and well, the TV series "Heroes". The movie is about these teenagers who have special psychic powers that turned fugitive by the government bureau that instilled the powers in them to begin with. Very similar to the "X-men" comic books, this movie is about having abilities and learning to harness it. One had telekinesis, one was telepathic, one had the power to heal, etc. I found the premise unoriginal, but it was shot in Hong Kong, so it kept my interest.
But with the movie aside, I was more interested in the screen play. I am strangely attracted to it still, the idea of regular people with super powers and the audience is left to figure out what the super power. We've seen this sense of suspense being employed many times before, but it still gets me. When we watched "Heroes" first season, half the fun was figuring out what the powers of the new faces were. Another version of this was the Japanese movie, "Battle Royal", where every kid had been given a weapon and forced to fight to the death on an island. Next there are smaller instances of this in the movie, "Cube", where individuals were trapped in a cube prison and was hunted down by a lethal predator. I guess this "who's who" game is always going to be interesting if it is written well. I'd like to write something along the same lines, but it's hard to do so without seeming unoriginal. At the same time, I've been on such a hiatus in writing that anything would seem good now. I'll try to get something started, again.
After watching Darren Aronofsky's film, the Fountain, I find myself wondering about the complexities of his film and other films that challenged me. But conversely, I have added a chart of movies that well, I enjoy when I'm low on patience or just don't want to think. I enjoy both realms, and I hope you do too.
-6 = WTF (you have lost two hours of your life, very simple)
-5 = Waynes Brothers movies - sometimes you just need to laugh, but the narrative is disappearing
-4 = Will Ferell movies - silly at most times, but who can forget Frank the Tank? and Ricky Bobby?
-3 = Adam Sandler movies - at odds with him, his jokes are too loaded with "please laugh here" implications.
-2 = Seth Rogen movies - hardest working comedy actor in the last year, lots of witty dialogue.
-1 = Michael Bay / Jerry Bruckheimer movies - will he ever make one as good as "the Rock"?
0 = Steven Spielburg films - you'll end up talking about his movies whenever you talk about film.
+1 = M. Night Shylamon films - everyone hates him now, but he still knows how to scare you.
+2 = Wong Kar-wai films - often lingers in your mind for days.
+3 = Charlie Kaufman films - often lingers in your mind for weeks.
+4 = Darren Aronofsky films - often lingers in your mind for months
+5 = David Lynch films - his films often require a thought map, or a class.
+6 = Italian Art films - yup, they're just weird.
+7 = WTF (weird for the sake of being weird, very complex)
Where's Stanley Kubrick you might ask? I haven't added him in because his body of work is pretty expansive. Plus I'm only thinking of the last twenty years.
I finished reading Murakami Ryu's book, Piercing, today at the library. It took me awhile to start the gripping Tokyo tale, but I decided to finish the latter two-thirds of it in the public place. I normally don't read at the library but today was the last day for the check-out and I couldn't renew it anymore. That's how it is, and I sat down and told myself "concentrate!" Besides an unexpected intermission, where two of my high school friends found me and chatted with me for a bit, I was able to read all the remaining 110 pages in one sitting. And I had ten minutes to spare to get two more books, sweet!
If I had to say anything about this book to a fellow book reader, I'd have to say skip it. It's really not for the light-hearted. I don't think people will enjoy this one as much as other Japanese novels. It's set in Tokyo, in the modern time, but like most Murakami Ryu novels, it's graphic and gets under your skin. The story revolves around two characters: a middle-aged man who's been abused by his mother and wants to exact revenge on his ex-lover by committing a crime on a random stripper, and a young-woman who's been abused by her father and finds herself haunted by illusions that tell her to cut herself. Both characters have tragic and abusive upbringings, and naturally, they meet in a hotel room. At one point the man realizes that she is similar to himself and rethinks his possible actions. "Besides, she's one of us. A kindred spirit. Are you going to stab a woman who's hacked her own leg into a bloody mess and who's lying there looking like death warned her?" And that's how the tone is and it gets darker from there.
Murakami expertly narrates from both perspectives and gives the reader a visceral account of the violence that happens to them. I say if you're not squeamish, give it a quick read. It is a great look at the psychos of an abused child after they grow up and a very disgusting representation of what goes on in Tokyo at night.
