November 2011
2 posts
Murakami Quotation of the Day
“So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that’s stolen from us—that’s snatched right out of our hands—even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of...
The System
“We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, and we are all fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong–and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and...
July 2011
1 post
I love Warren Ellis
Google+: HI I FOUND ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND PEOPLE YOU KNOW ON GOOGLE+
Me: ...I don't know any of these people. I've never heard of these people.
Google+: THESE ARE YOUR FRIENDS
Me: No, I've never seen these people before in my life.
Google+: GOOGLE+ SAYS THESE ARE YOUR FRIENDS THESE ARE ALL YOUR GOOGLE+ FRIENDS NOW DO NOT FUCK WITH GOOGLE+ GOOGLE+ TALKS TO GOOGLE STREET VIEW SO GOOGLE+ KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE DO NOT FUCK WITH GOOGLE+ THESE ARE YOUR FRIENDS NOW YOUR ONLY FRIENDS GOOGLE+ SAYS SO ALSO YOUR NEW GOOGLE+ NAME IS "BITCHTITS"
June 2011
4 posts
Super 80's
Out of every film coming out this summer, I’m looking forward to Super 8 the most.
There are a number of reasons for this, but it boils down to a few factors:
1. JJ Abrams directs, and he’s earned my trust after LOST and Star Trek
2. Though it takes place in 1979, the film’s aesthetic is almost certainly that of early-to-mid 80’s films produced and/or directed by Steven...
Thirty.
So next week I turn 30.
I’m sure most people my age share the same mixed feelings about hitting this milestone that I do. As a teenager, the age of 30 seemed one that was distant, unknowable. Even as I hit my twenties, I only held a vague concept of what it is that a 30 year old does on a day to day basis. I think, as a 15-20 year old, I had a lot of anxieties about hitting this age. What...
April 2011
1 post
A Happy Turn of Events
So, if you’re my friend (in real life or on facebook), you’ve probably by now heard that I finally was hired for a teaching job for next school year.
This comes after over a year of interviews, demo lessons, and sometimes just plain nothing in my job search. I interviewed for four positions, demoed for two, and, finally, was hired by Marin Country Day School in Corte Madera.
Though I...
February 2011
2 posts
Great Achievements in Unemployment; Or, How I...
So now that I am firmly entrenched in “in between jobs” mode, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. Though I do not feel that bad about being laid off of a job I truly hated, even if I do finally get a teaching job, it won’t start until August. That’s a lot of free time! (Sidenote: it looks like I do have interest from a few schools, so maybe I won’t be a...
Please Don't Eat My Dog
So as anyone who is my friend on Facebook has probably noticed, I occasionally run into this strange Asian woman at the lake near my place.
The lake, Lake Chabot, is a dog-friendly rec park. Since Aiko and I adopted Porkchop, and especially since I got laid off, I’ve made it a point to walk the dog every day at the lake. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is that he has...
January 2011
4 posts
Aiko and Noah: A Pictorial History
2004:
2005:
2006:
2007:
2008:
2009:
2010:
Things I Hate, Things I Used to Hate, Things I...
Things I Hate:
1. Usher - “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love”
2.
3.
4.
5. Rihanna - “What’s My Name”
Things I Used to Hate:
1. Baseball
2. Ben Affleck
3. Pineapple Express
4. Waking up early
5. Cold weather
Things I Probably Will Hate:
1. Any new books by Stephanie Meyer
2. Taylor Swift’s next shitty song about her latest breakup
3. Transformers...
Best Film of 2010
Is either True Grit or Black Swan or The Fighter or Mother or Toy Story 3 OR Social Network. Thanks to everyone who reminded me that Social Network was awesome!
Or Yogi Bear.
What's Changed? 2000-2010
As the decade ended last week, I started thinking about my life during those ten years.
On the one hand, 10 years doesn’t seem like a lot. On the other hand, those ten years will probably go down as the most eventful and transitory of my life. It’s really weird to think of where I was at as a person at the beginning of the decade as opposed to where I ended up as the decade closed.
...
December 2010
10 posts
10 People I Would Like to Drop Kick in the Face
Last night, I randomly started thinking about people I would really, really like to drop kick and/or punch in the face. These are mostly famous people, but there are a few others in my personal life that likely deserve one as well. I’ll refrain from naming them.
The idea here, though, is that the police come to me and say “Hey. Soooo you just won this secret lottery that we have. The...
Why I Hate Christmas.
I was recently reminded that I wrote a post on facebook a few years ago about why I hate everyone else’s favorite holiday, Christmas. There are, of course, lots of reasons to truly hate this holiday (and the holiday season in general). Some of them are, naturally, kind of petty and can maybe be just chalked to pet peeves more than anything else. But there are a few, truly genuine reasons to...
The Best of Times, The Worst of Times
The Best:
I really, really hated my job, so getting out of there was awesome.
The Worst:
No paycheck. Also, EDD fuck-ups = headaches.
The Best:
New puppy!
The Worst:
He’s a puppy…so he eats poop, runs into walls, and chews on furniture.
The Best:
Teaching hiring season starts next month!
The Worst:
Lots of English teachers out there.
The Best:
Second job interview last...
For Julia, In the Deep Water
This has always been one of my favorite poems to teach, and the last four lines in the final stanza in particular have been on my mind a lot lately.
“For Julia, In the Deep Water”
by John N. Morris
The instructor we hire because she does not love you Leads you into the deep water, The deep end Where the water is darker— Her open, encouraging arms That never get nearer Are...
My Ten Favorite Films of the Decade (US)
Continuing on! Here are my ten favs from the aughts for domestic films. Again - these are my favorites, not necessarily the films that I thought were the best made or most technically amazing (though a few films on here certainly fit that bill). I know there are plenty of people out there who will hate one or more of these films for various reasons (mostly because it’s not cool or trendy to...
My Ten Favorite Films of the Decade (Foreign)
So these are my favorite films of the decade. That doesn’t mean that I think they’re the best by any means, but that, for me, they were films that I can watch repeatedly and that are close to my heart for one reason or another. They’re not ranked or in any order.
Since this is my list, I went ahead and cheated - I’m making separate lists for American and Foreign films. The...
SoCal vs. NorCal
Ever since I first met a ton of Bay Area people in college, I’ve been hearing about the pros and cons of NorCal vs. SoCal. There are a lot of easy targets - for instance, though I am now a Bay Area resident, I will NEVER, EVER, EVER say the word “hella”. Other than to mock it, I guess. I mean, from what I can tell, there’s not even a true consensus on that word up here,...
My Life
Well.
After not posting for several months, I’m here with a new post. A lot has happened since then - I got a full time job, got married, got a puppy, and now just lost my full time job.
Being married is…not that much different than not being married. Only now, I wear a ring all of the time and I’m getting used to referring to Aiko as my wife instead of as my fiancee. In all...
August 2010
8 posts
A Strange Feeling
So, normally, this would be the last weekend “off” for me before I’d be heading back to Fairmont to start Teacher Pre-Week. I knew it was going to feel weird to not be heading back down to SoCal at the end of summer, and start getting ready for the next year. And it is.
I can’t say I’ll miss EVERYTHING about working at Fairmont. I won’t go into details about...
The Wrestler
There are many things to like about The Wrestler. There’s Mickey Rourke’s performance, unjustly denied an Academy Award. There’s the general atmosphere and tone of the film, a raw and gritty look at what it means to be down and out in this era. There’s the song that rolls over the end credits, with such memorable lines as “have you ever seen a one armed man punching...
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
I have been thinking a lot about this film over the last few months. This was intially catalyzed by a sort-of weird thing - a commercial. I react strongly to audio clips and images from this film, mostly because every time I hear a song from that film, or see and image that reminds me of it, I’m transported back to being a kid again, watching and rewatching an HBO...
July 2010
10 posts
Repost: In the Mood for Love
Here was my first post, on In the Mood for Love. Still one of my all times favorites.
Two of the noticeable things about the list of films I posted in my last note are: 1) most of them are foreign 2) they have all been released in the last 25 years or so. I’m not opposed to classic films; I love and respect the Godfather films (and really any American films...
Reviving "My Favorite Films"
Almost exactly a year ago, I decided to start doing a lot more writing again, as I hadn’t done much in years, and my brain was screaming for exercise. I got a bit sidetracked with it, though, and haven’t been able to update as much as I wanted.
I had started my series of posts on facebook, but I think I’m going to go ahead and revive on it on tumblr. I’m going to repost my...
Shameless Promotion
I recently entered an essay writing contest sponsored by Anthony Bourdain. The winner of the contest gets $10,000, but even more importantly, gets their work published in the paperback edition of Bourdain’s newest book. The link to my essay is here:
http://bourdainmediumraw.com/essays/view/1009 A couple things: 1) You have to register to be able to vote. You can do this through your...
6 tags
Inception and Cloud Atlas
I think it’s perfectly serendipitous that I watched Inception and finished reading Cloud Atlas in the same week, for a number of reasons.
Both works are interested in the concept of storytelling - the idea that there are stories within stories, that there is always another layer or veil to uncover, and that even those things that are, on the surface, relatively simple can become profoundly...
4 tags
The Decline and Fall of Eastern Civilization
The above image is, not, in fact, stolen from some Asian frat douchebag’s Twitter feed, or a reunion of Sunny Hills High School dropouts. Nor is it taken from the pages of some awful Korean magazine article about orphan runaways filling the streets of Seoul with cheap sex and drugs. No, the above image is the first shot of the cast of a new Ktown reality show.
This unfortunate gathering...
Best Review Ever →
I posted this on Facebook earlier, but this review is one of the best takedowns of any film I’ve read. Ever.
Favorite bit:
“You start out laughing at how random and mindless everything in this movie is, but about an hour into it, you realize that the movie is actually laughing at you, for watching it in the first place. And it’s laughing louder than you are, because it’s...
My New Home
I’ve been in the Bay for five days now, and it still really hasn’t hit me that I’ve moved.
There have been no major developments, no waking up at four in the morning in a cold sweat, no panic over anything. Things are strangely muted, and calm.
I think it won’t hit me, really, that I’ve moved until the end of August, when I’d normally be settling in for a week...
June 2010
15 posts
Micmacs
I don’t know how many of my past film students are following me, but if you guys liked Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, or Very Long Engagement, the director of those films, Jean Pierre Jeunet, has a new film out - Micmacs.
It’s a lot like his earlier works (especially Delicatessen, which is referenced at least a dozen times throughout the film), so if you’re a fan and you...
“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her...