Author: Adam (Page 7 of 224)

Why do I do this to myself? After the debacle that was “Goodbye Lenin,” who would have thought I would be buying a ticket to watch a French thriller about a psychotic criminal – the first of three interconnected movies? Talk about alarm bells. Admittedly the “hugging and learning” quotient was bound to be low, but still – what was I thinking?

It’s difficult to describe the sensation of watching this movie. Imagine “The Piano,” but instead of an irritating mute, the main character is the aforementioned psychotic criminal. We meander through a series of unconnected, meaningless events, with almost no dialogue. (And no soundtrack, as my friend and movie companion Susan reminded me.) We know almost nothing about the characters, such as they are. And the movie concludes with likely the most jaw-droppingly pointless, bash-your-head-in-with-a-hammer-because-you-watched-the-whole-thing ending I’ve ever seen. And that includes “The Piano,” which nearly incited me into a machine gun shooting spree when it was over.

Stay away, in the name of all that is good in the world.

Tom Burka neatly sums up how I feel about the national color-coded threat level in his latest piece on my new favorite site, “Opinions You Should Have.”

I would accompany this link with a rant, but I’ve already ranted about this in the past. I need to save my strength.

I recently put my profile up on Match.com. For those of you who are long-time readers of ‘words mean things,’ this must seem like a shockingly personal admission for me to make. But the whole thing is so silly, so strange, I felt like I needed to write about it.

I know several other people who’ve had great success meeting people through online personals. So far, I am not one of those people. Since I put my profile up three weeks ago (including photo), I’ve had two guys e-mail me, seemingly interested. But then when I e-mailed them back, no response. I’ve done searches on the site, but haven’t really seen anyone I was interested in contacting.

I’m thinking of expanding out to Yahoo! Personals, but I don’t know. This whole experience has allowed my inner 12-year-old girl to come out way too much for my taste. If I had a pink plastic diary decorated with unicorns instead of a weblog, I’d probably be using my purple sparkly pen to write things like “Does he like me? Or does he *like-me* like me?” surrounded by doodles of rainbows.

And that’s just not me.

I think it’s ample evidence of evolution that even for a crusty old curmudgeon like me, babies are cute.

And don’t miss Matthew Baldwin’s writeup of the photo – especially the end.

Mrs. du Toit is advocating the return of the monarchy. I wonder what her close personal friends the Founding Fathers would say about that. Especially with George I on deck. (Of course, GWB agrees with her.)

The woman has become such a psychotic reactionary, her rhetoric has folded in on itself like a wad of stuck-together duct tape.

All I have to say is, if this is what the Germans call a comedy, I’d hate to sit though two hours of German tragedy.

I found myself in this leaden pseudo-comedy after a minor brain disorder caused me to say to my friend Paul, “I’ll go to whatever movie you want to see.” He’a always criticizing me for my narrow movie choices, although my narrowness mainly centers around not wanting to sit through endless foreign films where people hug and learn lessons. So I wanted to show that I was broad-minded, even though I knew there were several “hugging and learning” movies flitting about. (The plot synopses usually start with something like “A moody Istanbul photographer…”)

So we went, and although it wasn’t exactly horrible, by the time the fourth or fifth story arc was wending its way toward self-conscious laugh-cry resolution, I was longing to see something blow up.

Watched the President give the first of six (!) planned speeches on the future of Iraq last night. It wasn’t carried by any of the networks, which I think doesn’t bode well with Bush getting his message (such as it is) out to the American public before the election.

As usual, he alternated between frightened and smirking. He always appears to me to have only the vaguest understanding of what he’s reading off the TelePrompter. But that’s just me, and we should judge a Presidential speech by its content, shouldn’t we? (Although I couldn’t help but think that Bush’s inability to pronounce “Abu Ghraib,” after all that’s happened, is sort of like Dick Cheney not being able to pronounce “Halliburton.”)

Based on content, the speech was an abject failure. “Stay the course,” when we don’t know what the course is, isn’t a plan. What does sovereignty mean when 130,000 – maybe more – American troops are roaming your country? What kind of legitimacy will an American and U.N.-picked government have? How come the handover is only a month away, and we still don’t know who we’re handing over to? When will American troops be coming home? So many questions with no answers.

I don’t know who I feel sorrier for: the Iraqis, or us.

“There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations too. Bad people have parties too.”

-U.S. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, casting around for a way to spin the latest PR problem in Iraq

In other news: GWB’s approval rating is at 41 percent. Wow. And 65 percent of those polled said the country is going in the wrong direction. That’s the same percentage as just before the 1994 elections, when voters gave control of both houses of Congress to the Republicans. Ouch.

An entertaining and thought-provoking documentary from Morgan Spurlock, who put his health at risk by eating McDonald’s food three meals a day for a month.

But as usual with documentaries, and movies in general, some of the most interesting stuff comes in the margins. The central stunt has an understandably dire effect on Spurlock’s health – he gained 25 pounds and put serious stress on his liver and heart. What’s more compelling are sequences like the one showing an alternative high school in Appleton that contracted with a natural foods company to provide healthy, unprocessed foods for the at-risk students there – and the wonderful effects that has on both the students’ behavior and learning.

This movie isn’t up to the Michael Moore standard of entertaining documentaries (a lot of people would consider that a good thing). But it has some important things to say about how corporate greed and American laziness and pleasure-seeking feed on each other. And it does it in good spirits.

Recommended.

The discussion over at Peppermint Tea for some reason reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from “Cheers.” Harvey played Rebecca Howe’s high school boyfriend, who came back to the bar and came out to a shocked Rebecca (Kirstie Alley). Which led to this exchange:

Rebecca: I always assume people are straight until I find out they’re not.

Harvey: That’s funny. I always assume people are gay until I find out they’re not.