I try not to do movie reviews. They give away too damn much. By describing the characters and plot they give away parts of the story that are much more interesting when you’re seeing that image with an untainted view of what the movie’s supposed to be. Old movies can be much more fun to see as you have no preconceived notions of what they’re supposed to be like. An Example? Go see The Sting, starring Robert Redford. Just do it. If I describe it or you look it up you’ll have taken away a really interesting element of this movie. Imagine if somebody had told you what makes Fight Club or The Six Sense so special before you saw it in the theatre. The punchline would be gone and the movie would be reduced from greatness to an interesting idea. Walking into a movie with _no_ expectations is the best way to view a movie and I always try to do everything in my power to not ruin the movie going experience for others.

BUT

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind had an opening week that wasn’t even in the top 5. This cannot stand. This is one of the best movies I have ever seen and the fact that more people went to see a zombie horror flick than this movie is just unacceptable, inconceivable, and will not be tolerated.

However, I refuse to do a traditional movie review as they lessen the impact a movie has on you. So the following are random tidbits to create “buzz” and to get you to see this movie.

• ONE minor character spoilor: Elijah Woods is in this movie and he plays an annoying twerp. If you’ve been looking for a reason to hate this huge puppy eyed hobbity punk, here’s your chance.
• The most negative review by a guy who likes to hear himself talk: “Another unpleasantly glib, shallow demonstration of Kaufman’s self-satisfied cleverness, further marred by failed pretensions to profundity about romantic destiny.” That’s right, unpleasantly, shallow, self-satisfied, clever, failed, pretensions, profundity, and destiny all in one sentence. He should win a pulitzer.
• I WILL go see this movie again if you want to go.
• Kirsten Dunst is hotter than Angelina Jolie. (SHAME on those who saw taking lives)

Anybody who saw the movie and would like to share their thoughts or has random unfounded opinions to share, bring it on.

Finally, my two word review: See it.

NOTICE: Due to the over-enthusiasm of the last entry, from here forth no more tootsie roll pops shall be offered on watchred.com.

I sometimes forget how willing addicts are to ignore sarcasm:

Eugene: it was a bad idea to quit smoking before i finished this equipotential
lab
Eugene: i’ve only done 1V and 7V and i want to scream
—
Me: it’s always a bad idea for you to quit smoking
Eugene: word to the motha
Eugene: i’m going to go get some smokes
Me: good
Me: grab an extra pack and smoke it for me
Eugene: thanks brian
Me: no prob
Eugene logged out.

I’m pretty sure this makes me a bad person.

“It’s like those monster vampire high school kind of movies, only here the monsters are Jesus-freak teenagers.”
-Michael Stipe, R.E.M. lead singer

First person to post what movie he’s referring to gets one chocolate flavor tootsie roll pop.

Since I’ve started taking photography classes I’ve been sort of obsessed with it, so I thought I’d post some thoughts that have been cycling through my mind without regard for the fact that _nobody_ will be interested. However, there is a pretty picture at the end.

on chemistry and digitry:

Photography is just a huge, complicated parlor room chemistry trick. You expose some silver halide crystals on a razor thin sheet of film to light for a bajillionth of a second, process the film in about eight hundred chemicals in complete darkness, shine some light through your negatives and an enlarger onto another material with some more silver on it, dump it in a few more hazardous chemicals, then rinse and dry. All of this has made me realize that digital photography is just as legitimate as film photography. They’re both just ways to capture an image and I’d say that digital photography is even more natural with respect to the original image due to the lack of complicated error prone steps needed to get something you can look at.

With digital photography, cameras can become more portable than ever, though right now it seems manufacturers are content to just put a digital sensor in their existing camera bodies. As sensor technology improves, sensors will be able to get smaller and smaller and “normal” size sensors will become more and more powerful. The need for costly, bulky, medium format cameras could be eliminated as the final image size is determined by the sensor in the camera, not the physical size of the sensor, whereas in traditional photography the amount you can blow up a picture is directly affected by the negative size. This does create the need to upgrade that isn’t currently prevalent in the photography world, my camera that was made in 1986 isn’t all that different from a new camera while a digital camera made in 1999 is already unusable. Whichever way you like it, digital technology is here to stay and it should be interesting to see what the next 5-10 years brings us. Personally, I hope it brings an 11 mega-pixel SLR for under three hundred dollars.

cool toys

Through my Photo 1 teacher I recently discovered toycamera.com, a website devoted to crappy, old, plastic lens camera photography, the idea being to use the camera’s vices to create art. My favorite is the Holga, a piece of crap camera that costs only $16.99 (less if you buy in quantities of 6 or more), and whose natural vignetting gets me the photographic equivalent of aroused. I mean, how cool is this:

Peni and Other Pluralities
Taking non Latin words and having them use the Latin plural form just because they end in “us” can be great fun. If the plural form of “alumnus” is “alumni,” what stops “Lexus” from becoming “Lexi” and “Bus” from becoming “Bi”?

One Man’s Minute is Another Man’s Eon
Lauren was talking to me about how the end of semester is coming up so quickly. Her semester ends the first week of May, AFTER I find out whether I got accepted to any of the schools I applied to, which won’t happen for an incomprehensibly, disastrously long amount of time. Right now, the concept of knowing where I’ve been accepted or rejected reminds me of Schr?dinger’s cat in that until I open the envelope, I’m not accepted or rejected, I’m some combination of both. The decision has been made, they just haven’t enlightened me, so to me the letter is simultaneously an acceptance and rejection letter until I open it and it reverts to it’s final state.

Nah, I’m not nervous, not one bit.

Yesterday Lauren and I went for a hike at Griffith Park, which is only ten miles away from my house and gave us a chance to get outdoors and get some great pictures:

Unfortunately, due to some confusion, our sweet little 1.75 mile round trip trail ended up being SIX MILES. Do to a certain party’s involvement this topic will not be discussed further. Today I still suffer from the blisters, chafing, and emotional ruin which are a direct result of this this unnaturally long trek.

On the positive side I did end up with 8 Cricket Colas, the only Cola made with green tea.

Later that day while watching Matchstick Men, we had the most random visitor (RV from now on). Here is the conversation between me and RV:

RV: *knock* *knock*
Me: Hello?
RV: Hi! Do you have any condoms?
Me: Sure…
Me: (returning) Here you go.
RV: Thanks! (enthusiastically) I’m about to get &$#@ed!

There’s one for the grandkids…

I’d like to end this entry with some instant messages that have appeared to me in the past 24 hours:

From Eugene:
Eugene: i remembered my $200 voice recorder wouldn’t work and I was going to flash it
—
Eugene: funny thing is, my concentration level in class has gone up since this thing stopped working
Eugene: thats not funny

Eugene: damn, my friends hard drive just crashed
Eugene: he’s a graphic designer
Eugene: and his whole portfolio was in there
Eugene: plus all the work he does for other people
Eugene: the funny thing is, he has a $3000 server sitting right next to his computer
Eugene: and a backup hard drive that he was using to store movies
Eugene: now thats funny

From Lindsey:
Lindsey: I MADE PIE
Lindsey: IT LOOKS SO DELICIOUS

I am such a consumer whore. Six, Seven times a year I am drawn to movies of which I know _only_ what I’ve seen in a two minute preview. A two minute preview that prioritizes getting people to come to the theater with disregard to everything else, even revealing major plot points. Studios pull out of a pool of about 5 actors, 3 scriptwriters and 2 directors to get me to come to the theater time after time. And it works. It works like a Tank, as reliable as it is relentless

I want to see Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless mind so bad that it’s irrational. Jim Carrey finally looks like he found a part where he can be believable in his manic ways. Kaufman finally has a lead man that’s as insane as his scripts. I have to realize it’s just a movie and that even though Jim Carrey’s in it, even though it was written by Charles Kaufman (Being John Malkovich anyone?), and even though title of the movie sounds like a Sgt. Pepper era Beatles song, I need to somehow get myself grounded so that I can walk into theater without high-as-Snoop-Dogg expectations.

Oh well, I’ve decided I’m going to repent this evening by watching a smaller art house movie, perhaps Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, another Kaufman written project whose budget was so small that several famous actors (Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt) did _unpaid_ cameos. If not Confessions, that then most likely Donnie Darko, which has been on my “to see” list for so long it’s established residence there for tax reasons.

fin.

“I can eat pretty much anything. I ride bikes–I’m a bike-sexual. I ride hard, I ride long. I go long distances on a bike. I’m sponsored by Viagra, which means I don’t need a kickstand.”
– Robin Williams’ pre-Oscar slim-down tip

• Generate your own church sign, like this one:

  

  As interesting as that is, Real Church Signs can be even more fun.

• Can’t come up with that perfect zinger to get back at that annoying guy from work? Lea La Biblia!
  “Listen, O ye Mesopotomian harlot, for you will be pursued into the mountains by sex-mad baboons!”
• Why focus on the gay marriage issue while other important Old testament teachings go unnoticed?

• Today’s theme: Rest and Recuperation. The secondary theme would be laziness, but only as it relates directly to the first. I’ve been sick, so I basically laid around until I could hear my mom say “drink your fluids!” from deep within my skull, at which point I’d drink some water and lay around some more.

  It was magical.

• It was also ungodly hot here today. The rain I can deal with, but heat is just depressing. It’s like a four hundred pound, naked, heavily perspiring gentleman is sitting on your chest: It’s not just excessively hot, but it smells bad and you fear moving will just make it worse. It has been pointed out to me that there’s a pool twenty feet from my front door, but I haven’t really lost this year’s winter insulation. Or last year’s for that matter…
• This game is just plain addictive, while at the same time being free. Deadly. It’s a puzzle type game in the “Full Throttle” vein. You pick stuff up and put it where it doesn’t belong in order to get the next level. Absolutely inane, but it DEMANDS to be played. Good thing I don’t have any real classes this semester.
• There’s something else….

Once in a while you get the feeling that if you were in a movie, people would be screaming at your ignorance as you sat there blissfully unaware of the opportunities dancing in front of your eyes.

Let?s review the situation as I sat in front of my computer at 1:00am Friday morning:

1. My sister always invites me to see her perform at her High School Comedy Sportz shows.
2. My sister had a High School Comedy Sportz show Friday night.
3. I haven?t seen her perform since freshman year.
4. I feel bad about 3.
5. For the first time since freshman year, I had absolutely _nothing_ to do on Friday _and_ Saturday.
6. Lauren had plans all day Saturday.

So, I?m a little slow, but the obvious finally occurred to me. I didn?t tell my sister I was coming up and she freaked out when I appeared there. Jumped me fosbury style.

Good times.

Either my pants have been extremely stretched because I haven’t washed them in a long damn time, or I’ve lost some weight.

Update: I’ve just done my laundry. The pants fit much better now.

My Uncle B. runs a radio station at Red Bluff High School and they recently published an article about him in the local paper that was also picked up by the San Jose Mercury News (Second Story down). Apparently one of the history teachers at the high school donated his entire record collection to the station, including some of my personal favorites, such as Frankie Laine’s “Hell Bent for Leather” and “Negro Folk Songs for Young People.”

On a completely different note, I’m not a big fan of turkey eunich meat, but Lauren can’t get enough of the stuff:

I walked out of my photo class this morning and prepared to drive to the parking structure for the first time this semester. After over a year of walking about a third of a mile to campus, I received the parking ticket that finally broke my resolve and decided it was time to just pay the $75 for a parking pass. As I followed about eight others into the structure, I took a gamble and turned the opposite direction of everyone else to check out the 20 or so parking spots on the very bottom level.

The gamble paid off.

An unguarded parking spot lay open in front of me as if it had been waiting for me since I last had a parking permit in December 2002, always believing that one day, I would return. And so I pulled into the spot, opened my door, tilted back in my chair and just took a second to appreciate the excellence of my location. After my parking spot had been fully acknowledged to the extent which it deserved, I reached for my gym clothes so I could head over to my weight training class and found? air. My gym bag wasn?t there. I checked the whole car, the passenger side floorboard, behind both seats, but I simply forgot the damn bag at home, on my bedroom floor, three to four inches in front of my computer, and 11 miles from where it needed to be.

With a sigh I realized that I could make it home and back in time, so I got down on my hands and knees, kissed that sweet asphalt goodbye, and drove out of a spot whose equal I will probably never know. I made it home and back in record time, and found a spot that my Honda civic was barely able to squeeze into on the second floor of the complex, far, far away from the stairs. Still, I had 15 minutes left to get changed and get to class, so I began walking. As I was passing the weight room door I noticed a yellow piece of paper hung up that read the following:

Briggs, 12:45-2:05pm,
CANCELLED

So here I am, back at school with my gym clothes and nothing to do for the next five hours.

Sunday, March 7th, 2004 marks the end of an era for me. I began working for The Hut with an open mind, but after a year (damn… a full year) of bad gas mileage, annoying customers, washing dishes, being ripped off by children, almost crashing into co-workers, not being able to speak Spanish, never once getting off at the time it says on the schedule, eating greasy pizza four days a week, having my car smell like pepperoni and ASS, never having the weekend off, missing out on meals when Liz comes to town, JENNIFER, a seven cent raise (good job!), and just one person too many tipping me entirely in nickels, I am more than ready to call it quits and move on to my new position at Staples. There will for sure be some things I miss, and I’m sure time will be kind to my remembrance of The Hut, but in the end, I hope this entry jogs my memory.

After gym class, I have a four hour and forty five minute gap until my next class, so I often find myself reading material for one of my classes. Today was no exception as I came into the library, found one of the obscenely comfortable chairs next to the window and started reading the chapter on printing in my black and white photography book and somewhere between the filters and the baseboard I just tilted my head back, put my book on my lap, and checked out.

In the middle of my tenure as a millionaire photographer sought world around by photographers for my printing skill (?He makes it look soo easy,? they?d say) and by gay men for my startlingly good looks and fine taste in clothing (?Really, you?re NOT???,? they?d say) I suddenly felt my head go flying off with the swift CHU-CHINK of the guillotine. Upon awaking fully I turned around to find myself looking into a HUGE lens attached to a camera held by an elderly woman whom, as I would discover momentarily, was named Marilyn.

With a voice just below a whisper, Marilyn told me her name and explained, ?It was a really good shot.?

I just hope my mouth wasn?t open.

There’s a lot of the following going on in my Photo 1 class:

Professor: “While on the left picture the background is IN focus because he used a smaller aperture, on the right picture the background is blurry as a result of a much larger aperture.”

Guy in the back: “Soooooooooooo, how did he make the background so blurry in the second picture? Is he moving the camera or something?”

If this doesn’t stop soon I’m going to start bringing a rolled up newspaper to class.

EDIT(3:44pm): I just remembered another one:

Professor: “This photographer is famous for his printing technique which makes his pictures look as if they were paintings.”

Guy in the back: “Woooooowww. Those pictures look almost like paintings.”

The weather around here is pretty great. Mid 50’s, lots of clouds, and plenty of rain. It’s good for wearing jackets (which I look good in), good for hot cocoa (tastes great, less filling), and does wonders for tips as a pizza man, but… Bad for my car. Getting in and out of my car with wet shoes over 7 hour shifts at pizza hut, followed by closing the windows for extended periods of time has left the inside of my car smelling of a wet, long dead, dog. Fortunately when I’ve actually been driving to school it hasn’t been raining and driving around with both windows down has been enough to get rid of the stench on a temporary basis.

The aforementioned strain on my car could finally be seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve got a job interview at Staples this Friday, and so we’ll see what happens with that. Katie (Lauren’s sister) refers to it as the WORST STAPLES EVER for exactly the same reasons I want to work there: It’s only open till 6pm on weekdays, 5pm on Saturdays, and is closed on Sundays. But like I said, we’ll see. I’m still hopeful that the library will end it’s hiring freeze any moment and I’ll be bombarded with offers from the 8 locations I applied at. I’m getting to believe that’s wishful thinking at this point, however.

I’m absolutely infatuated with my photo classes. Scary statistic: 56% of the people enrolled in the SMC photo program are people who already have a B.A. and just hate their jobs. The last part of that statistic is implied, but a quick hand raising exercise in my Black & White Photography class confirmed it pretty handily (haha, I made pun on accident). Hopefully getting an early injection of photography will somehow vaccinate me against hating my chosen profession.

Lastly, my sister mentioned that she enjoyed being mentioned in my blog, so:

KELSEY.

“Georgia has ruled that state schools will continue to be able to use the word ‘evolution’ in the classroom. However, as a compromise, Dinosaurs will now be referred to as Jesus Horses.”
-Jimmy Fallon, weekend update

Since all of the recent hullabaloo over same sex marriages, I’ve heard an ocean of opinion on a subject that to me always seemed pretty clear cut. Growing up in a rather liberal San Jose during my childhood, I’ve always believed (probably somewhat naively) that people were past this particular issue and whatever part of the country hadn’t come around would do so soon enough. Even my most staunchly conservative friends would roll their eyes as Jerry Falwell screeched that homosexuality was causing the decay of western society. However, since attending San Luis Obispo, an area which has much more conservative values than my native San Jose or my current Los Angeles home, I’ve come to realize that there is still a pretty large group of people out there who think of homosexuality as either a mental disease or the result of too much exposure to radiation. The worst part is it’s not one of those values that tends to change much with time, I expect neither camp will change their feelings about the issue during their lifetime, so it’s up to the next generation to look at the the world around them and decide whether or not gay men and women have a place in it.

The following is a letter I read on Joshua Marshall’s blog.

Josh,

I’m 62 years old and grew up in Missouri. When I married my first wife, who as Japanese American, we had to do so in another state. At that time it was against Missouri state law for interracial marriages to take place. Times change.

40 years later the pain of that state-sanctioned inequality, which made some couples second-class citizens, still stirs an old, deep-felt resentment. While I’m not gay, I certainly have sympathy for the state-sanctioned unfairness that gay couples endure and believe that in another 40 years (probably much sooner) gay marriages will be a simple, accepted fact of life.

John

Everyone has their own opinion, but as for me, I just hope when I’m sixty years old my child will have learned about this as just another sad chapter of American history, lumped in with Slavery and Manzanar.