dr. who

so i watched the first two episodes of the new season of dr. who. now when i was a little tyke, i used to watch it with my dad and jim. i loved the long scarf, the tardis, and of course, the daleks. but when i watched the new season it seemed too dr. who. the most exciting part of the show was when they played the theme song. man i love that theme song. the most disappointing part was the monsters. they were marginally better than the ones that i saw in the late 80's, but still not as good as i expected to see. this is the 21st century--i need good monsters. and for that matter, a good, edgy plot. unfortunately, it was the doctor, running around, hiding and saving people from the same plastic (literally) monsters.

it's like when hook used to be my favorite movie. then, i watched in college. it was awful. my advice is to stay away from anything you enjoyed as a child. don't ruin those precious memories.

further instructions

lost is a pretty rediculous show. i dig the crazy sci-fi stuff that happens, and i think the format, with character-specific flashbacks, is a great idea. the new season is good--the division of storylines agrees with me quite well.

but what is making me write now is the great vision that locke has in episode 3, "further instructions." without giving anything away, the setting is perfect, the parallels it sets up are right on, and it has a bit of a creep-out factor that any good hallucinogenic vision quest should have. A+, lost.

a buddhist parable

once upon a time, a woman had the idea to test a buddhist monk's vows of abstaining from killing, sex, and intoxicants. she invited a monk to her house under false pretenses, and locked the door behind him. she told him she would not give him the key unless he did one of three things: kill a goat tied up in the back yard, have sex with her, or drink a flask of wine.

while the killing and the sex affected others' lives, the drinking of the wine affected only the monk's own, so he decided he would drink the flask.

the next morning, while nursing a nasty hangover (a little interpretation there) the monk realized that while he was drunk he killed the goat and ate it, and afterwards made love to the woman.

this parable demonstrates why clouding your mind can be so detrimental. while it may seem like a small, insignificant act, the loss of control that can follow may prove to be more damaging.

freak show

david cross has been a hero of mine ever since i watched mr. show the first time. the way they linked the skits together was genius, and if you have ever seen the drugachussetts episode, you know what i mean.

his new project is called freak show. it is about a crack team of freaks who go missions given to them by the parking attendant at the white house. even though i'm a big fan of david cross, i'm not a huge fan of freak show. there are a few barbs pointed at our society, government, etc, but it doesn't push it over the hump for me. perhaps if i was in an altered state, i'd feel differently.

i am neither a fan of aqua teen hunger force, and they seem to have that audience in mind. it is the same type of animation, the same type of bizarre setups, and many of the same voices, as well.

it's just not david cross enough.

world trade center

wow. not what i was expecting. i need a nick cage who is going to save the day not...whoops...spoiler alert....

be trapped in a pile of rubble for the whole movie. i mean, oliver stone nailed the tone i think, and i teared up a few times, but on the whole i was expecting something much different. Perhaps my expectations lost it for me, as expectations often will.

or perhaps it was the shitty bootleg i was watching. first it was in german till we switched the audio. then the cameraman in the theatre kept rubbing the mike against his jacket or something. in the dark scenes in the rubble it was too dark, and there was no detail--it added a gritty feel to it, but watching nick cage's eye glints for a whole hour is a bit much. then it switched back into german for another fifteen minutes, no matter which language it was in, and finally it cut out the best part of the movie when the crazy vet finds the cops.

so it could be either expectations or bad bootlegging. i say a little from column a, a little from column b.

but i think that stone made an honorable tribute to such an awful event. i still don't know what to make of the vet...i guess it was stone's little piece of commentary in an otherwise tame movie. well shot, well acted, just maybe not what i was looking for.

more haikus

at the risk of this becoming a haiku based blog, in my sparetime waiting for buses to travel to the cultural revolution museum, i wrote a few more.

escaping chicken
many ways to be free, now
nope, back in the bag

chinese funnel in
buses pull out constantly
will it ever stop?

blue sky, sun shadows,
breathing air you cannot see
an anomaly

dirty-ass kid squats
dad supports his endeavor
peeing in public

(his ass was actually dusty, that's not a figure of speech.)

taxis vie for place
safety is not a concern
speed above all else

mao in porcelain
cultural revolution
history in plates

meditation wonderfulness

quiet sitting now
rain falls, flute sings, life is good
china, my haven

me and my shadow

as i meditated tonight, i did so (inadvertently) with my reading light on, instead of my overhead light. therefore as i sat, i looked at my shadow. now the main idea behind sitting is to put yourself in the moment, and let go of your ego. it was great, because as my eyes became soft, my shadow would lose focus, and eventually disappear into the wall onto which it was cast. it seemed to me a great metaphor for my practice. i'm not sure it is good for my sitting, however.

inland empire

i lived in the inland empire for four years. not the inland empire proper, which straddles the border of san bernardino and la counties, but a small oasis inside that concrete desert called claremont. but often we'd venture out. it has been called the porn capital of california, it has been called the crank capital of the united states.

and now david lynch is making a movie out of it. inland empire was shot completely on a run of the mill dv recorder over the space of several years. now i have never been able to finish a david lynch film, although i've really wanted too. and i was going to watch twin peaks in college but it never panned out. i did see the seasame street version where a bunch of muppet birds had two beaks...i figure it's not quite the same.

since i lived there, and the review looks interesting, i figured i might give it a shot.

extras season 2?

i'm not sure i can handle this second season of extras. the office was great. i guess in the middle of the run it got a little rough, but there was always dawn and tim buoying it up. and in the first season of extras, things were on an uphill climb. but now in the second season, i'm not sure if i can bear it. he seems to be at the top of his career as a wig and glasses wearing, catchphrase saying actor. it is brutal. it is exactly where he would be had he not done the office right.

i've decided that the big problem is i'm watching it alone. there is no one to share the collective groan with, so it becomes internalized and soul crushing. then again, i've only seen the first two episodes. and maybe i'm just a light weight. either way, it's gonna be tough for me to get through 4 more episodes.

but i love ricky gervais. and no, i'm not having a laugh.


ed. note: you can watch the current extras episode featuring daniel radcliffe on the bbc 2 website here.

heroic bloodshed

SPL or Kill Zone is brutal, brutal, brutal movie. a hong kong noir with plot holes you can walk through. for instance, the kingpin (sammo hung) is arrested for murder because they find a tape of him beating someone with a golf club, but since someone else shot him, they had to let him go. but i guess i needed to suspend disbelief.

the plot of the movie is this group of cops who will do anything to bring this brutal kingpin down. when their captain is diagnosed with a brain tumor, a new straight edge is brought in to take over. my favorite part is when the at-all-costs cops confront the new guy, after a quick little fight, and with some orchestral music, convince him that breaking the law is okay, in this instance.

everyone dies at the end, except the bad guy, and he's been emotionally destroyed. brutal.

that being said, the fight scenes are wicked. the fight between the straight edge cop and the knife wielding maniac in white is awesome, only second to sammo hung vs. straight edge guy. pretty intense, and pretty brutal.

shitty american things

i keep wanting these shitty american things. to drive on a freeway with giant oversized SUVs. to go to mcdonald's and eat with dangerously overweight people. to sit down for a nice meal at chili's and have non-sensical conversations in english. where is my cheese? where is my deep fried fat? where is my english? ahhhh...the cold beer of commercialism. everything here is mom and pop. nothing is the same from shop to shop. sure i can get pepsi or a cornetto (read european drumstick) at any corner shop, but i have to go to mcdonald's for a big mac, and that bothers my sensitive non-capitalist seeming tendencies. one day, i may have to venture in.

weird awakening

i woke up at 3 this morning because the power went out. i don't know why it woke me up, i just did. i could tell the power was off because my mosquito repeller was off. it's like the forcefield coming down on a spaceship. bad news. captain kirk's screaming, "where is our mosquito repellent scotty! i need mosquito repellent!" i checked the lamp, and it wasn't working either.

so i went to the bathroom thinking i could do it in the dark, but the sounds on the chinese western toilet are all wrong. there is not a big bowl filled with water. it's like a slide that goes down to a pipe. so you can't tell by the water noise if you're doing okay. so i had no idea what i was doing, and hosed the whole thing down completely. (i cleaned it this morning.

after the bathroom, i found that my watch was missing off my wrist. it has my alarm on it, so i needed it, or i wouldn't wake up in the morning. so i donned my headlamp (which i then realized i should have done sooner) and searched for about a half hour before i found it next to my bed. i finally got back to bed and to sleep.

i woke up this morning with my bedside lamp on. the power was back...but i was tired.

zoolander's based on a book.

i found out today that brett easton ellis, author of american psycho, sued ben stiller, mastermind behind zoolander after the movie came out. this was because a year before the movie, bee (as i like to call him) wrote a book called glamorama. in this book, a dimwitted male model becomes entangled in a fashion based terrorist organization. interesting ben. very interesting. they later settled out of court.

still, i love zoolander. and i like american psycho (the book) as well. so i'm very interested in seeing how glamorama is. it's been dipped in two layers of creamy potential. so buy it for me. it's on my wishlist.