Million Dollar Baby

I didn't find this to be a LOT better than Mystic River, but then, I really, really liked that movie.

Clint Eastwood's acting has a mirror-like quality to it; you get out of his performance what you want to read into it. He's not going to force you into a particular interpretation of his character by overacting. His voice is nearly absent in some scenes.

I could see this film, in other hands, having been overly dramaticized or weepy. That, or it could have just been about boxing. Eastwood never really dwells on any character or event long enough to set it apart from the rest of the film, thereby singling it out as a particularly tearjerking moment (except maybe the penultimate scene, but not so much so even then). In the same way, there aren't any really lengthy shots anywhere, and the cuts are sometimes so frequent as to seem like a mistake.

Rather than trying to drive any particular point home, Eastwood tells the story with a lighthanded touch and lets you ponder the themes and situations after you've left the theater. The characters get to you not because they're so expressive, but because their mostly impassive appearances imply hidden depths that, for the most part, are not made explicit.

These are, for Hollywood characters, very unglamorous people, but the production fits them. I love Eastwood's minimal style, as both director and music composer. Hopefully he'll stick around for a long time to come.

The Thermals at the Triple Rock

All-ages shows at the Triple Rock never have the best audiences, but at least this one wasn't obnoxious.

I think I like the Thermals a little bit better on record than in concert. The vocals aren't quite as nice as they sound on the first album, which is something I noticed at the Trail of Dead concert as well. A little reverb probably would have helped.

If anything, the Thermals play even faster live than they do on their albums. I think they played most of their recorded output even though their set lasted less than an hour.

Were you the sort of person to ask me which songs I liked best, I'd respond with "God and Country," "Every Stitch," and "I Know the Pattern".

It wasn't great, but it was pretty good. I don't know that a fast and furious punk rock showcase could ever really overwhelm me since the focus is less on perfecting a sound and more on being raw and non-professional. Either way, I got another poster!

10.0

I suggested that I might have a long post about the concept of the 10.0 (or 5 stars, or what have you) rating for a record album, but I've had plenty of other things to attend to today.

Suffice it to say that if I were handing out big-number merit badges, by glancing at what I have listed in iTunes as my thirty favorite albums, here are those that could potentially receive the ultimate rating (as always, this consists only of what I've heard a lot):

• Interpol: Turn on the Bright Lights
• My Morning Jacket: At Dawn*
• Sigur Rós: Ágætis Byrjun
• Dismemberment Plan: Emergency & I
• Modest Mouse: The Lonesome Crowded West
• Weezer: Pinkerton
• DJ Shadow: Endtroducing...
• Belle & Sebastian: If You're Feeling Sinister
• Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska
• Wire: Pink Flag
• Nick Drake: Pink Moon
• Velvet Underground: Loaded*
• Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited*
  
  * = Other albums by the same artist could be considered.

And, I think my 15,000th song added to iTunes will certainly be "All You Can Eat" by the Fat Boys.

Carletonian

I had this (solicited) opinion piece in the Carletonian this week:

Social Security Privatization = Way Cool!

Since he became president back in early 2001, George W. Bush has been dispensing freedom around the world like a soft-serve machine dispenses tasty chocolate ice cream. Yum! Even the Iraqi insurgents, unsure of how to accept so gracious a gift, must be nearly overwhelmed by how generous our presidential administration is with its freedom.

There's so much freedom going around these days that we'd better make a list:

• Afghanistan? Free!
• Iraq? Almost free!
• Osama bin Laden: Yep, still free!
• Up next: senior citizens of the United States.

Hip hip, hooray! You'd think those over 65, and all who someday will be (that's us!), would be jumping for joy. After all, who wouldn't want to be free of the burden of a state-mandated social safety net, providing for your finances if you, in your twilight years, are not able to support yourself; it sounds pretty terrible to me!

Apparently, the president and his fellow executives feel that the Social Security system is looking a little too "welfare state" these days, and needs an overhaul. I mean, a federal government looking out for the well-being of its citizenry? That is so twentieth century!

You know who really cares about our senior citizens, though? That's right, Wall Street! Currently corporations with trillions of government dollars invested in them are a little confused about what do with Social Security funds, and rightly so. I mean, isn't it a little weird having the government throwing wads of Social Security money your way? Totally! However, President Bush wants to help us to make it clear to the corporations that it is, in fact, the American worker who is entrusting to them his, or her, hard-earned retirement cash. Then they'll realize that it's okay to spend, spend, spend, and let those stock prices soar like bald eagles in the blue sky of liberty! We'll all be geriatric millionaires!

I mean, with a plan as swell as this, who needs security or stability? Who needs a steady flow of 40% of their pre-retirement income when you could be getting rich on tech stocks? Wait, I mean Enron. Er, well, you're sure to find some unbeatable stock in which to invest. In fact, we all will. If each worker invests all of his, or her, retirement fund in an above average stock, this plan will totally rock!

For some reason, though, those killjoys at the AARP don't like freedom or big retirement salaries. I'm not sure what their problem is, but I think it's about a lack of caution or something bogus like that. Lame! Apparently they've been listening to those crackpots over in the Congressional Budget Office who claim that Social Security could be solvent for the next 47 years. That sure sounds like fuzzy math to me!

You know, I guess if the executive branch of our government weren't so smart, we could just bite the bullet and raise taxes a little bit and... oh wait! No, we definitely can't, because that would reduce our freedom index rating quotient.

The idea of privatizing Social Security is so awesomely obvious that I can't believe Bush didn't implement it before, like in 2001 during his first term. We liked freedom back then, too, didn't we? Did he not do it because everyone would have laughed at him after having spent the preceding year watching the Dow and the Nasdaq tumble earthward from their tech-inflated heights? No, I bet it's because he wanted to save us a little something special for his second term, in case we were getting bored with stuff like Iraq and the eradication of our civil liberties. Oh, George W.--it's no wonder we reelected you!

Microserfs

Douglas Coupland seems to have captured the zeitgeist (as far as I can tell) of tech culture of the mid 90's. His characters, who all work at Microsoft at the beginning of the book, migrate to Sunnyvale to form a start-up around a new (for 1994) object-oriented programming interface called Oop!, in which the user creates things out of Legos.

On an emotional level, the book is about how these geeks, who have no life except coding while slaving away under Bill Gates, form a community and fall in love and find themselves and whatnot. On a philosophical level, it's focused on how technology has affected our culture in the late twentieth century and will continue to do so.

At times, the non sequiturs got to me, as they seemed little more than a forum for Coupland to pass along musings of his own or that he might have picked up here and there. Also, the ending was a fairly shameless melodramatic ploy, but one that fit perfectly.

Coupland seems fairly hopeful about the potential of the internet and computers to play a positive role in human development, even saccharinely so. One character in particular likes to spout off about how computers are the essence of humanity stored offline in non-organic form.

The metaphysics are at times hard to swallow and some of the characters' observations are have become less clever in the eleven years since publication, but it was enough to encourage me to keep reading Douglas Coupland.

On a related note, the reason I chose Microserfs was that it was the first recommendation at Coupland's author profile at Guardian Books. They aren't always perfect, but the hundreds of bios, critical summaries, and suggestions of where to start make for an accessible and compact sort of literary guide.

Titles

I'm experimenting with titles at the moment. The current one at the time of this post, "Midnight in a Perfect World," is the title of a DJ Shadow song. I will list any more ideas I come up with here. If you happen to like one, you should comment.

• Midnight in a Perfect World
• Things Behind the Sun

You may also note that I won't be using any previous titles from other pages or sites, mainly because I don't feel like it.

Tripod Blogs

I was looking at the free blogs hosted at Tripod/Lycos, and these are the differences I noticed from what's available here:

• Ads, though they may not be required
• Post attributes such as "Mood," "Now Playing," and "Topic"
• A "Buddy page"
• A calendar based archive system

Also, Tripod offers webspace, which I don't think Blogger does, which might be nice if I wanted to store other pages or files. Actually, I have a Tripod account, which you may remember from days of yore, specifically the summer of 2002, if I recall correctly. However, I don't think Tripod was ever very good at serving remotely hosted images to other sites.

Then again, I have a Flickr account, which will apparently remain free, if limited, for perpetuity. I'll have to find some method to post pictures assuming I get a digital camera in the next few months. I think the easiest method would probably be for me to just put my pictures up at Flickr and have a single link to my photostream. I don't think I would need more than 3 photosets, more than 100 pictures available at a time, or more than 10MB of uploads per month. Assuming I don't really need too many pictures at more than 512 x 384, which I wouldn't unless I wanted a lot of detail, the pictures would probably be an average of 40KB, which would mean an average limit of 250 pictures a month.

AMG vs. Bright Eyes

Stephen Thomas Erlewine really, really doesn't like the new Bright Eyes albums. To the tune of 1255 words, in fact. By contrast, the new Low album gets 363 words, the new Chemical Brothers gets 325, and even Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, one of the most talked about double albums of the half-finished decade, only merited 748.

I certainly agree with some of his points. Though he doesn't out and out decry 'emo', he does complain about music that is "judged solely on whether it's a personal emotional expression or not, never taking into account such niceties as craft, in either music or lyrics, or in the sheer impact of the music."

Also:

Its directness reveals that the emperor has no clothes. Stripped of the careening, dramatic, meandering arrangements of Lifted, Oberst's music seems not simpler, but simplistic, the plodding music acting as a bed for monochromatic melodies that merely serve as a delivery mechanism for all those words he's poured out on the page....

Oberst is as precious as Paul Simon, but without any sense of rhyme or meter or gift for imagery, puking out lines filled with cheap metaphors and clumsy words that don't scan. Supporters excuse this as soul-searching, but the heavy-handed pretension in the words and the affectedness in his delivery... give the whole enterprise a sense of phoniness that's only enhanced by its unadorned production.

Much of this rings true for me, at least some of the time, on Bright Eyes songs I've heard both in concert and on record. When the raw emotion works for me, it's because of the specific sentiments he's expressing, and not the way he chooses to express them.

However, I tend to listen more for the sound of the music than the lyrics in most cases, and for that reason some Bright Eyes songs that other people like (I assume because of the emotion/themes/etc.) I don't find very listenable.

Don't chalk up its weakness to youth, either, or suggest that he'll get better with age. Paul McCartney was 22 at the height of Beatlemania. At the age of 23, Dylan made Bringing It All Back Home, Neil Young released Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Jackson Browne cut his debut. Kurt Cobain was 24 when Nirvana recorded Nevermind, the same age Conor Oberst was when he released the pair of albums that prove without a shadow of a doubt that instead of reaching musical maturity, he's wallowing in a perpetual adolescence.

The ending seems particularly bitter and harsh, but not entirely unwarranted. I think Rolling Stone or Spin or something had a heading on the cover last week like "Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst: Best Songwriter of His Generation?!!!!!!" That struck me a sensationalist probably nowhere near accurate, but I'm sure it's those kinds of wild overstatements that provoke such a backlash.

Incidentally, Fog (especially live) strikes me in the same way as Bright Eyes. They're both celebrated, at least by some, but their experimentation sometimes seems more like laziness and contempt for traditional song structure than anything positive. If I thought about it long enough, I could come up with a long list of artists like this, but it would probably be offensive.

I suppose I will probably have to listen to I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning first, before passing any final judgements.

Sidebar

You have probably noted the gradual evolution of the sidebar. I'm not sure exactly what should be included yet.

I like everything that's currently there, though the organization might change. I'm thinking the "Five Albums..." list will ideally alternate weekly or so with a few other lists of approximately the same length. I could even put it up every week on Wednesday at 5:00 pm, or something like that, for kicks.

Letter to the Editor

At the suggestion of Brian Rumsey, online editor of the Iowa State Daily newspaper and fellow recovering Geistmag.com addict, I submitted a letter to the editor. The text is no longer posted here because you can click on the title above to link to it at the Daily's website.

Sports Hierarchy

So I decided to make a hierarchy of televised sports; that is, an ordered list of the sports I would watch on TV, if that's what I was set on doing at the time. This is almost entirely irrelevant at college, since I don't watch sports here, but I've only got 18 weeks left at Carleton. Also, this list is somewhat inaccurate considering certain sports never overlap, but let's pretend they all are televised twelve months per year. This is a subjective list, including only what I want.

1. College basketball
2. NBA basketball
3. Major league baseball
4. College football
5. Soccer
6. Tennis
7. NFL football
8. PGA golf
9. Olympic sports
10. Poker
11. Hockey
12. Horse racing
13. Billiards
14. Bowling
15. Boxing
16. NASCAR

Movies Meme

From 1000words by way of the Chutry Experiment by way of GreenCine. Bold the ones you’ve seen, and add three to the end.

1. Trainspotting
2. Shrek
3. M
4. Dogma
5. Strictly Ballroom
6. The Princess Bride
7. Love Actually
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
11. Reservoir Dogs
12. Desperado
13. Swordfish
14. Kill Bill Vol 1
15. Donnie Darko
16. Spirited Away
17. Better Than Sex
18. Sleepy Hollow
19. Pirates of the Caribbean
20. The Eye
21. Requiem for a Dream
22. Dawn of the Dead The original.
23. The Pillow Book
24. The Italian Job
25. The Goonies
26. Baseketball
27. The Spice Girls Movie (Spice World)
28. Army of Darkness
29. The Color Purple
30. The Safety of Objects
31. Can’t Hardly Wait
32. Mystic Pizza
33. Finding Nemo
34. Monsters Inc.
35. Circle of Friends
36. Mary Poppins
37. The Bourne Identity (both!)
38. Forrest Gump
39. A Clockwork Orange
40. Kindergarten Cop
41. On The Line
42. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
43. Final Destination
44. Sorority Boys
45. Urban Legend
46. Cheaper by the Dozen The original.
47. Fierce Creatures
48. Dude, Where’s My Car
49. Ladyhawke
50. Ghostbusters
51. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
52. Back to the Future
53. An Affair To Remember
54. Somewhere In Time
55. North By Northwest
56. Moulin Rouge
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
58. The Wizard of Oz
59. Zoolander
60. A Walk to Remember
61. Chicago
62. Vanilla Sky
63. The Sweetest Thing
64. Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
65. The Nightmare Before Christmas
66. Chasing Amy
67. Edward Scissorhands
68. Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert
69. Muriel’s Wedding
70. Croupier
71. Blade Runner
72. Cruel Intentions
73. Ocean’s Eleven
74. Magnolia
75. Fight Club
76. Beauty and The Beast
77. Much Ado About Nothing
78. Dirty Dancing
79. Gladiator
80. Ever After
81. Braveheart
82. What Lies Beneath
83. Regarding Henry
84. The Dark Crystal
85. Star Wars
86. The Birds
87. Beaches
88. Cujo
89. Maid In Manhattan
90. Labyrinth
91. Thoroughly Modern Millie
92. His Girl Friday
93. Chocolat
94. Independence Day
95. Singing in the Rain
96. Big Fish
97. The Thomas Crown Affair
98. The Matrix
99. Stargate
100. A Hard Day’s Night
101. About A Boy
102. Jurassic Park
103. Life of Brian
104. Dune
105. Help!
106. Grease
107. Newsies
108. Gone With The Wind
109. School of Rock
110. Tommy
111. Yellow Submarine
112. From Hell
113. Benny & Joon
114. Amelie
115. Bridget Jones’ Diary
116. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
117. Heavenly Creatures
118. All About Eve
119. The Outsiders
120. Airplane!
121. The Sorcerer
122. The Crying Game
123. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
124. Slap Her, She’s French
125. Amadeus
126. Tommy Boy
127. Aladdin
128. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
129. Snatch
130. American History X
131. Jack and Sarah
132. Monkey Bone
133. Rocky Horror Picture Show
134. Kate and Leopold
135. Interview with the Vampire
136. Underworld
137. Truly, Madly, Deeply
138. Tank Girl
139. Boondock Saints
140. Blow Dry
141. Titanic
142. Good Morning Vietnam
143. Save the Last Dance
144. Lost in Translation
145. Willow
146. Legend
147. Van Helsing
148. Troy
149. Nine Girls and a Ghost
150. A Knight’s Tale
151. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
152. Beetlejuice
153. E.T.
154. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone
155. Spaceballs
156. Young Frankenstein
157. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
158. American President
159. Bad Boys
160. Pecker
161. Pink Floyd: The Wall
162. X-Men
163. Sidewalks of New York
164. The Children of Dune
165. Beyond Borders
166. Life Is Beautiful
167. Good Will Hunting
168. Run Lola Run
169. Blazing Saddles
170. Caligula
171. The Transporter
172. Better Off Dead
173. The Abyss
174. Almost Famous
175. The Red Violin
176. Contact
177. Stand and Deliver
178. Clueless
179. William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet
180. Dangerous Laisions
181. I Am Sam
182. The Usual Suspects
183. U-571
184. Capricorn One
185. The Little Shop of Horrors (the one with Jack Nicholson)
186. Die Hard
187. The Flamingo Kid
188. Night of the Comet
189. Point Break
190. Chatterbox
191. Secretary
192. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
193. American Beauty
194. Pulp Fiction
195. What About Bob
196. Roger and Me
197. Fahrenheit 9/11
198. Bowling for Columbine
199. The Professional (aka Leon)
200. The Fifth Element
201. La Femme Nikita
202. Heathers
203. Bull Durham
204. The Scorpion King
205. The Thin Blue Line
206. Do the Right Thing
207. Lady From Shanghai
208. Basquiat
209. Super Size Me
210. Memento
211. A Brief Encounter
212. High Fidelity
213. Being There