Snowmageddon 2012

Icey Twigs

All of the trees must bow before the whim of Snowmageddon!

ALL OF THE TREES

Frosted roots.

Poem: I Want

I Want...

To wish the world away 

to shroud my sight in darkness 

listen to the silence 

and breathe the empty air. 

Touch an absent hardness 

lose all my defiance 

and taste the nothing there. 

Then dream the world aware 

from art to God to science 

filled with love and kindness. 

Wake mind fully bare, 

complete, with no reliance 

sight restored from blindness 

and live my dreams each day.

Movie Review: ParaNorman

ParaNorman is a very good movie. It is animated in the style that made The Nightmare Before Christmas so charming. It is dark, and imparts what I consider to be good values without being wishy washy and heavy handed in imparting them.

Story: a boy can see and talk to ghosts. This leads to a lot of hurtful actions from his fellow students, grown-ups, and his parents. He lives in a town once cursed by a witch, who was an 18th century female version of himself. Because of the time period she grew up in, the consequence of her being weird was her execution by hanging, rather than the incessant grind of bullying and "why can't you just be normal?"s. Norman is tasked with sating the spirit of this witch and subduing the curse year after year, but he ultimately ends the curse and frees the witch's soul to paradise (or at least oblivion) with some pretty skillful psychology.

The movie is about abnormal people who are generally castigated or ignored by their peers, the people who should care about them most, and society in general. It shows that we are useful people. I think my favorite line from the movie is the ghost of the boy's grandmother saying "it's okay to be afraid...as long as you don't let it change who you are." Learning to be yourself and everything you want to be in the face of fear--whether justified or not--that you will be rejected or disliked is a very difficult lesson to learn in any sort of meaningful sense (i.e. I'm still learning it).

Generally, the animation is not what you would describe as "attractive" so much as cool. However, the visual beauty of the animation builds up to the climax, which is just about the most amazing animation I've ever seen. The final scenes are beautiful to watch.

Movie Review--Bloodworth

Bloodworth is a movie about two people: a man from the Tennessee hill country who abandoned his family 40 years before the movie starts, and his grandson. The grandson ultimately walks away from his entire insane hillbilly family. It ends with "the one who gets out" setting fire to his family's country cabin and walking way, a la What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

This movie was quite good. There are parts that are a bit overdone, but I liked it! The basic tension in the plot is between the importance of family, and the importance of walking away from the people you're bound to if they hold you down and back.

I've come to accept the fact that I like virtually all movies, and no one who ever reads my movie reviews is likely to ever see a negative movie review out of me.

Movie Reviews Catching Up

I'm not very consistent about blogging. I'm generally pretty busy all the time. Here are quick reviews of other movies I have seen.

The Dark Knight Rises
This was a good movie.

My Summer of Love
My Summer of Love was generally a pretty good movie. One problem with the version of it I saw is that the spoken lines did not match up at all with the video. This was very frustrating. I initially thought that it was because it was originally shot in a foreign language, but after carefully studying the main characters' mouths during some dialogue, I concluded that this was incorrect.

The basic plot is that a poor girl meets a wealthy girl. They fall in love and engage in a youthful romance over the course of the summer. The poor girl's brother is hyper-religious, sort of the born again variety. She, herself, is very passionate, almost to the point of insanity. The wealthy girl is a masterful manipulator and deceiver who ultimately breaks her heart and goes back to school.

I would recommend this to most folks.

The Darwin Awards
This movie was hilarious. The plot is: a detective gets fired after he allows a serial killer to escape under comical circumstances (relating to his fear of blood). He then goes to work for an insurance company. There's a big plot hole here; he is trying to sell what seems to be an aggregate analysis system to help insurance companies properly underwrite life insurance policies by injecting a "probability of dying as a result of extreme stupidity" element into the underwriting algorithms. But, what he actually ends up doing is post-claims auditing to deny insurance claims filed by people who do extremely stupid things. So, I don't see how his original premise matches up with the assignment he is ultimately given.

That point aside, the movie was hilarious and touches on the humanity of people who die under circumstances that are so stupid as to be kind of comical.

Donnie Darko
This was a great movie. Based on the fact that everyone who knows me has said that I would love this movie, I will assume that everyone who knows me has seen this movie. It is weird, it is quirky, it is enjoyable. Watch it.

Little known fact: a young Seth Rogen appears scattered throughout Donnie Darko. By that, I don't mean to say that he was chopped up and his body parts were scattered in various sets in the movie (which would make sense), but that he appears in numerous scenes throughout.

Weird Science
The main lesson I learned from Weird Science was that the 80s were a dark and frightening time, and I'm glad I had only very limited consciousness of my existence throughout them. The story is that two high school geeks use their computer to create a living woman out of a toy doll. She has more or less magical powers (I'm sure the creators intended her to just have super-physics powers but, hey, what's the difference?). She embarks on a quest to not only make them cool by being their hot older woman friend, but to also make them actually cool, mature young men who stand up for themselves and the people they care about, and stand up to bullies and dickish older brothers. She is successful in this quest.

I would definitely recommend this movie to most folks. It's kind of geeky, but funny, so people should see it.

Malice in Wonderland
The trouble with Malice in Wonderland was that I was drunk when I watched it, and it was kind of a spacey interpretation of parts of Alice in Wonderland, which I haven't read in a long long time. I remember liking it quite a bit and feeling that the reviews were unduly harsh. The plot is that a girl suffering from amnesia gets run over by a cab driver in London. The cab driver is a drug dealer who's late for a party at a criminal kingpin's house. The kingpin is about to set up a bank robbery, and it is believed that he will divvy up jobs for the robbery (and, hence, its profits) to whosoever should bring him the best gift. The amnesiatic girl is the daughter of some high power, criminal-type businessman. Anyway, there were lots of little adventures that were fun to watch, and I'd recommend people seeing this.

The only line I remember from the movie was the riddle "what has no conditions but one condition" (the obvious answer being "love"). I remember this because I thought it was oh-so-insightful in my drunken stupor.

TiMER
This was a fun movie! The premise is that a company has developed an implant that can read a person's internal signals and calculate the precise moment when they will meet their soulmate. This resonates with a theory my father has espoused for most of my life--that people marry the people they marry not for who they are but because they happen to be ready to settle down and get married at the time they're dating them. Another way I've heard this theory stated is: "don't think that you're going to be the one who can convince another person to settle down. They'll be ready to settle down when they're ready to settle down and if you happen to get them when they're not ready, you're fucked." I happen to think about that topic an awful lot--whether perhaps I've met the right person but just wasn't ready to be with the right person or the right person wasn't quite ready to be with their right (see graph below for a representation of this thinking)...anyway, I digress.

The movie has its funny moments, and the un-timer-ed romance in the midst of it is sweet. The male object of that romance was possibly the prettiest man I've ever seen in a movie. It's weird being a guy and seeing a guy and thinking "wow, I could really agree that he's pleasant to look at" is a weird experience. I digress again. In the end, the various romantic developments turn two sisters against each other, and the protagonist ends up meeting the man of her dreams one morning while out on a jog.

Ultimately, this movie could have been a lot better than it was. It didn't utilize the dramatic tension well enough, and it could have been funnier. But it's a good way to enjoy an evening at home alone or with someone else if you're both in the mood for some goodhearted fun.

12 Monkeys
12 Monkeys is pretty widely known, so I'll be brief. The plot is that a man from the future keeps getting booted back into time to discover and/or stop the source of an outbreak of plague that more than decimates the human population and drives the remainder underground. He repeatedly runs into the same psychiatrist (who initially treated him as a paranoid schizophrenic on his first trip back in time), and ends up kidnapping her and convincing her of the veracity of his claims. In the end, he almost stops the release of the plague and dies in front of his childhood self in the past. It is pretty well-acted, and the effects are silly enough to be enjoyable.

Ruby Sparks
This movie tells the story of a washed out, high school drop-out author of a wildly successful book at the age of 19 who has writer's block at 29. As part of an assignment from his psychiatrist, he creates a character named Ruby Sparks, the girl of his dreams. Then she steps out of the page and into his life. This theme has been done a few times before, and this telling of it was charming. The best, most insightful scenes are at the home of the protagonist's parents, where you see that the protagonist really is not very comfortable in his own skin around other people who are comfortable in theirs. He is rude, ungrateful, and withdrawn, largely because his mother does not fit into the mold that he believes his mother should fit into. This behavior drives Ruby away before he decides to manipulate her by writing new facts about her into his story, which forces her to do whatever he's written. Ultimately, he releases her and wipes her memory, and turns the whole story into a novel that sells very well.

The movie is, at heart, about the folly of forcing people into the boxes of our expectations for them. The lead character is driven by his view of the way people should be, and when he encounters a divergence from his pre-set vision he (1) ignores it so thoroughly that he doesn't notice it, (2) runs from it and hates the person who diverges from his image of them, or (3) tries to force a change to make the person align with how he thinks they should be. Freud once defined love as "the overestimation of its object" (this is actually a misconstruction of what Freud said; he was only talking about sex). In my opinion, you can't truly love a person until you accept them as they are and love all aspects of them. A quote I came up with when I was 17 (i.e. this isn't a new theory for me): "perfection makes us beautiful, our imperfections make us lovable."

I think that's all the movies I've watched in the last three weeks or so.

Movie Review--Trainspotting

I'm told that most people are pretty familiar with the movie Trainspotting. However, I saw it for the first time on Netflix last night. It was excellent.

Ewan McGregor, or someone who looks suspiciously like a young Ewan McGregor with his hair shaved off, plays a young (looks to be 25-27) junkie who decides to give up smack. This goes well for a while, prior to a relapse, and final period of cold turkey rehab. The story focuses on the addiction, the effects of withdrawal, and the lengths addicts will go to in order to support their habit. Finally, it includes a last redemption in which the protagonist leaves the people who hold him down and repeatedly drag him back into the mire of addiction and failure.

The film is mostly plot- and style-driven, with a bit of character development. By that, I mean that it has a mildly quirky style that it plays up to good effect, and it focuses on events more than the people experiencing them. Some of the dialogue is entirely incomprehensible, because it's spoken in Scots slang. Much like English slang, Scots slang is very difficult to understand for folks who speak standard English.

I would strongly recommend this movie to anyone.

It's a Big Stage After All!

I don't often write poems, but here's one I came up with just now.

Gone to the mountain, the uppermost peak.
Triumphed, lived joyous, then found myself weak.
Drank from the fountain, learned pleasure and love,
felt pain destroy it, then raise it above.

Often I wonder wherefore am I here.
Some offer answers and speak most sincere.
Oh what a blunder, claiming to know,
when just a dancer, here in the same show.

What is the mystery you want me to see,
when clouds filter water from the deep sea?
Why suspect trickery when ill befalls life,
and fall off kilter from toil and strife?

There may be a reason guiding our rhyme,
not one you'll learn now, life frozen in time.
Live in your season and love what you find,
don't trouble on how your soul came alive.

Whatever the cause, purpose or meaning,
figure it out right after this screening.

Launch of Movie Reviewing Fun

Last Friday, July 13, 2012, I set up an account with Netflix. Say what you will about the propriety of setting upon a new task on Friday the 13th, I am very much enjoying my new Netflix membership. It allows me to see all sorts of very interesting movies that I wouldn't even have heard of, let alone seen, if not for Netflix. Here are the movies I have watched so far:

Bubba Ho-Tep
Raising Arizona
Broken Flowers
Repo! The Genetic Opera
Submarine
The Babysitters
My Left Foot
The Shape of Things
Dog Day Afternoon

I will endeavor to write a brief review of each of these, and keep a running commentary on additional movies I see.

Bubba Ho-Tep


This was a movie along the lines of The Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. In fact, it stars the same actor who played the protagonist in The Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. It was very funny, though it purported to be a horror movie. The basic plot is that Elvis switched places with an Elvis impersonator, and the impersonator had a drug problem, leading to Elvis's believed death. Also, John F. Kennedy, though shot in the head, did not die, but was dyed black to live the rest of his days as an African American. He then winds up in a nursing home, where an ancient, and recently escaped, animated mummy has been keeping alive by sucking the souls of the elderly from their rectii. The movie utilizes laughably simplistic effects to depict the mummy, its activities, and Elvis's & JFK's battle to defeat the mummy. Although kind of silly, this movie was highly enjoyable. I strongly recommend enjoying this film with a glass of your favorite intoxicating liquor, wine, or beer.

Raising Arizona

Another goofy classic, Raising Arizona tells the story of a couple in what is becoming a dead end marriage who decide to circumvent their infertility by taking one of 5 quintuplets born to one of the wealthiest families in the Great State of Arizona. Much of my favorite humor in the movie occurs in the opening scenes in which Nicholas Cage repeatedly lands himself in prison for not-armed robbery (robbing convenience stations with unloaded weapons), and parlaying the booking process into a cutesy romance with the booking officer. He finally proposes by entering the booking room as a free man (instead of shortly after an arrest) and asking her to marry him. Once they get married and steal the baby, John Goodman and a fellow escaped inmate arrive to badger Mr. Cage into joining them on some further criminal shenanigans, namely robbing a bank. Mr. Cage's boss and these escaped convicts, as well as a bounty hunter, all decide they want the baby, though none of them to return it to its rightful parents. It all ends up in a hilarious clusterf*ck of a climax that ends with Mr. Cage and his wife more or less deciding to break off their marriage. Or do they?

Broken Flowers


I don't have much to say about Broken Flowers. It is a film about Bill Murray discovering that he impregnated one of his many girlfriends 18 years ago. So, he sets out to find out which of his girlfriends he impregnated. There is some humor here, but it is mostly the sort of humor where you think "this situation is so awkward and strange that it is funny." Ultimately, I don't think the film is designed to entertain or to make you laugh so much as to give a little insight about life. It succeeds at that, but that doesn't leave me with anything fun or entertaining to say about the movie.

Repo! The Genetic Opera


This was a truly fascinating movie, and one of the few musicals I've watched and really enjoyed. It is the source material for a movie that came out a few years ago called "Repo Men" or something like that. It is set in the none-too-distant future at a time when one company has gained a monopoly on the production and distribution of synthetic human organs. Most of these organs are paid for on finance plans in which the company takes, essentially, a purchase money lien against the organ. Oh, and they also got Congress to pass a bill that allows the company to repossess their property in the event that the consumer fails to make their loan payments on time. The company also developed a highly addictive pain killer that can stay in a person's brain long after they've died, leading to a black market for the drug run by grave robbers who take the drug directly from dead addicts' brains. It is dark, it is fierce, it inspires a good deal of thought. The grave robbers' songs were particularly interesting to me. I'll leave out further plot points because, for me, the themes and songs stand out much more clearly in my memory than the plot. But the story is also compelling.

Submarine


Submarine is about a school-aged boy living in Wales. His parents' marriage is not working very well due to a lack of sexual intimacy. He launches on a quest to get his parents back together and lose his own virginity. Unfortunately, the initial object of his affections is a girl whom he bullies. He winds up being responsible for her falling into a pond in Wales in the autumn. Hardly a pleasant experience for her. However, this attracts the attentions of another girl. Anyway, long story short, he succeeds in both of his goals, although his mother cheats on his father with an old flame of her's who happens to be their neighbor, and the protagonist ends up getting dumped for another boy. One take away message might be that life's winding roads and convoluted paths may let you get what you set out to get every now and then, but achieving your goals doesn't always make you happy in the end.

The Babysitters


Well, this movie was...interesting. It is about a 16 year old girl who starts an illicit affair with an older, married father. She babysits his kids. When he gives her extra money for babysitting after their first kiss and initial forays into a sexual relationship, she decides that what she has with this man is more-or-less a prostitute's relationship with her clients, so she loses her childish notions of romance. And starts a prostitution ring of other high school girls operating under the guise of being enterprising babysitters. The movie shows the impact these actions have on the girls' lives. I will tentatively say that this was a good movie, although the subject matter made me a bit squeamish.

My Left Foot


One of Daniel Day Lewis's earlier film roles, he stars as an Irish artist who grew up with and lives with almost completely crippling cerebral palsy. The only part of his body that he can use is his left foot. Hence the title. He uses this appendage to paint haunting masterpieces that bring him a certain amount of success. Much of the story focuses on his extreme difficulty in finding love from women, who view him as an object of pity, rather than as an object of love. This is a touching and inspiring movie about a man with a perfectly functioning mind and an almost entirely non-functioning body. He struggles and overcomes these insurmountable hurtles, and picks up his own share of personal flaws. In other words, it humanizes, rather than lionizes, a man who overcomes adversity.

The Shape of Things


I liked this movie quite a bit, even if it was, ultimately, a bit depressing. Paul Rudd meets a woman played by Rachel Weisz. They end up dating. She changes him in a number of ways that make him generally much more desirable to women. Then she...well, I'll leave it at "she dumps him." The particular way she dumps him is highly memorable. It is a story about the ways women can manipulate men to mold them into things they would otherwise oppose becoming. Although, as I'm sure most women would tell you, their capacity to change a man is pretty limited.

Dog Day Afternoon


Al Pacino plays a young gay man living in New York who robs a bank to get money to pay for his wife's sex change operation. The movie was made in 1975 and is set in 1972. The fact that they even made this movie at that time is surprising. The movie was excellent. You get to see what appears to be the best meaning, though most poorly planned bank robbery ever caught on camera. It is, at times, very funny, and I would recommend anyone seeing it. It is based on true events.

Semen Foeniculi Pellit Spiracula Culi

A text-o-graphic odyssey, by your humble and rarely blogging blogger narrator person.

"Sing to me! Tell me the tale of Malaysian Mint Curry." Thus speaketh every one of the two people who occasionally stumble upon this blog! Verily will I oblige!

But first, I must make an effort to admonish, to warn, to ward off your attempts to follow me down the lonely road of curry! Venture not down the path of creation lest thou be brave, lest thou art determined, lest you be possessed of great patience! For mine is a tale, not only of triumph, but also of tribulation. Not only of love, but the onerous burdens its maintenance rests upon your foolish, feeble shoulders.

On Sunday, July 15, 2012, I set out to make a mint curry dish I found on allrecipes.com. The recipe can be found here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/azalinas-mint-curry/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=mint%20curry&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page

Our tale of want, woe, success, and joy begins at 5:45 p.m.

I arrived home. I went forthwith to my counter of many spices.

I begin by boiling a half cup of water. While it reaches a boil, I slice open 10 crushed red chilis and remove the seeds. These, I place in the boiling water, there to soak in hellish temperatures for 30 minutes.

While the chilis soak, I prepare all of my other ingredients. I grate coconut. I set out pre-powdered coriander and cumin. I measure out fennel seeds. I cut lemon grass, crush garlic, chop shallots! I peel and chop fresh ginger and turmeric roots. I measure out star anise pods, cardamom pods, cloves, salt, and set two cinnamon sticks on my cutting board. I chop up a half cup of fresh mint leaves, which, incidentally, I had to go to three grocery stores to obtain.

Around this time, I decided to photographically document my efforts. Here, my narrative will become much more clipped for, as all know, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Toast the coconut!

Toast the coriander, cumin, and fennel seeds.

Puree the coconut, fennel, coriander, and cumin with chili oil.

Blend shallots, chilis, lemongrass, garlic, ginger, and tumeric into a curry paste, using water as necessary.

Heat some oil, and add the anise, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and mint stems in it. Remove spices. Cook the curry paste.

Add chicken.

Add coconut milk. Bring the curry to a boil. Reduce heat. Allow to simmer for 1 hour.

Allow to simmer for one hour?

ONE HOUR?!?

Wash dishes.

Put away unused spices.

Juice a lime.

Juice two limes.

Juice all the limes you want! You're stuck here for an hour! Heheheghahaha!

Recover from lime madness. Slip into mint depression. Wonder "when will I get to add this mint I spent three hours finding over the last two days?"

Fuck it. Have a scotch. 

Add the mint and some water, stir, and serve or store.

Wake up the following morning. Take a shower. Repeatedly wash your hands. Fail to cleanse the yellow stained nails of the damned!

Serve over mixed rice. Eat. Remember why you love curry. This dish is truly magnificent.

 Such is the life of a curry making fiend.

"Semen foeniculi pellit spiracula culi" (the title) is a Latin saying that means "the fennel seeds make blow the arsehole."

A Return to the Blog

After an extended departure following a very short-lived spurt of blogging when I started this blog, I have decided to write once more. I have very little to write about, because I am exceedingly busy with work.

Today, I attended a working-lunch with my boss and some other attorneys. We went to the Dixie Cafe. I wanted to write briefly to address the sham that is Dixie Cafe's shepherd's pie. Shepherd's pie, for those of you who didn't grow up with an Irish woman who cooked it once every two weeks, is meant to be a stew of red meat and vegetables covered with a thick and insulating layer of mashed potatoes. Dixie Cafe's shepherd's pie, however, is nothing of the sort. It is a hunk of meatloaf topped with a scoop of mashed potatoes. I will, however, say that Dixie Cafe's "shepherd's pie" is tasty, if not in any way, shape, or form an actual shepherd's pie.

I resumed jogging several months ago and have maintained a fairly regular schedule of jogging. I switched from jogging 5 miles every now and then to 2.5-2.7 mile jogs much more frequently. For a while, I was doing 2.5 miles 6 days a week. Now, I'm lucky to get in 2.7 miles 3 times a week. But, it's still better than nothing.

Interesting thing about spending all your time at work: if you work all day every day, you don't have interesting experiences that you feel are worth sharing with the world via blog. I guess I could talk about work, but that would amount to: today I spent 9 hours reading through a thousand pages of documents, and then I spent three hours writing a legal brief. It's just not...exciting.