I’ve seen 3 monster movies in the last week. In case you were wondering, that certainly is above average. It’s actually quite surprising that I was able to see that many in the theater in a week; maybe they’re making a comeback. In any case, in order of quality they were:
Cloverfield: great. I feel that pretty much all criticisms against this movie are unfounded. That’s not to say that it’s a superb bit of film that will change your life, but it knows what it’s doing and does it well. Criticism 1: the camera shakes. Deal with it. Your eyes shake all day long also and your brain compensates. Just crank that up and you hardly notice after a few minutes. Criticism 2: nothing is explained. I repeat, deal with it. If you can watch pretentious art-house films you should be able to handle not completely understanding a movie. Criticism 3: the characters are interchangeable and poorly fleshed out. Guess what? The characters are real people. Lots of characters in film are caricatures. In reality you’ve got a bunch of friends that are sometimes a bit dull and they tend to act in a similarly. Criticism 4: it’s too short. I disagree. If it were longer it would get redundant and diluted. Cloverfield is a great monster movie. It’s a fun experimental movie. In exchange for a slight suspension of disbelief you get a great ride.
Beowulf: good. This movie wasn’t nearly as good, but had some very interesting elements going for it. Obviously it looked great. It didn’t look like real life. It looked like watching an awesome video game for 2 hours. For me that’s entertaining. It actually had some pretty interesting thematic elements. Part of this is due to the original story, part to Neil Gaiman’s script. And perhaps most importantly it had Angelina Jolie naked. Sure it was a CG Jolie, but they obviously put more money into her model than anyone elses. And I’m not complaining.
AVPR: mediocre. In case you missed it, Alien Versus Predator: Requiem came out on Christmas. Perfect holiday fun. Like Beowulf, it was worth a dollar to see it. I’ve seen every Alien movie and every Predator movie, and I’ll be darned if I’m going to stop now. They’re removed the skilled directors (James Cameron, Ridley Scott, David Fincher), taken out the big name actors (Arnold, Glover, Sigourney) and replaced them both with tons aliens attacking each other. It was much better than AVP, but still not good. They did manage to surprise me as to who gets killed off and who doesn’t, which is a bit of an accomplishment for a monster movie. It was worth my dollar, but I’ll never see it again. I flipped for watching this or Atonement this afternoon, and heads won.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Adventures Gone Awry
I’m someone who seeks after new experiences. My laziness typically prevents me from doing things that are too terribly exotic, but I make do with my small adventures.
Earlier this week I learned that Drew was giving a lecture here at OSU. None of you know who Drew is, but he is the creator of Toothpaste for Dinner (found easily enough at www.toothpastefordinner.com) which read moderately often and enjoy. I decided to go based on 3 things:
1. I bought some t-shirts from Drew a while back, and in our emails he seemed like a stand-up guy.
2. Drew has made a career out of being amusing, not hilarious or even funny, which seems like an admirable goal.
3. I’ve never gone to a lecture completely outside of my field, let alone one by a cartoonist, let alone one by a moderately deranged cartoonist.
Turns out, the lecture wasn’t amazing. Drew was amusing in person, but rarely broke into funny. Every other audience member knew far more about him than I did, thus many of the questions they asked made little sense to me. His business model doesn’t seem likely to work for me. And while I found his lack of public speaking skills amusing in and of themselves, this significantly slowed the process of his presentation. My little adventure, while not a disaster, didn’t go nearly as well as I’d hoped.
Tonight after going to the temple I decided to once again have another subdued adventure. We were trying to decide where to go for dinner (you get relatively little flirting done in the temple itself, thus the dinner trip afterwards is requisite) and I suggested Clovers, home of the butterburger. My reasoning being that something that sounded so gross must actually be good, or the restaurant would have been closed down by now. Since no one had any better ideas, and I am in fact a convincing and charismatic fellow, we agreed to try out Clovers.
Since this qualifies as another misadventure, things obviously didn’t go terribly well. Evidently a butterburger has a toasted, buttered bun. Not very exciting. The end result is a burger slightly greasier than a greasy burger. While I’ve had countless burgers of lower quality, I’ve had a slightly higher countless number of better ones. I wouldn’t qualify this as an adventure gone awry except I did drag 9 people with me to have the butterburger experience, and the disappointment mounts with each additional visitor.
But I remain undeterred; every adventure can't be successful. Tomorrow I’ll investigate the restaurant known both as the best and worst Mexican food in Columbus. I’ll attempt to navigate a bookstore which has more than 30 rooms. And perhaps most daring of all, I’m going to attempt to make it from my house to the gym using nothing but underground tunnels. What can I say, I’m an adventurer.
Earlier this week I learned that Drew was giving a lecture here at OSU. None of you know who Drew is, but he is the creator of Toothpaste for Dinner (found easily enough at www.toothpastefordinner.com) which read moderately often and enjoy. I decided to go based on 3 things:
1. I bought some t-shirts from Drew a while back, and in our emails he seemed like a stand-up guy.
2. Drew has made a career out of being amusing, not hilarious or even funny, which seems like an admirable goal.
3. I’ve never gone to a lecture completely outside of my field, let alone one by a cartoonist, let alone one by a moderately deranged cartoonist.
Turns out, the lecture wasn’t amazing. Drew was amusing in person, but rarely broke into funny. Every other audience member knew far more about him than I did, thus many of the questions they asked made little sense to me. His business model doesn’t seem likely to work for me. And while I found his lack of public speaking skills amusing in and of themselves, this significantly slowed the process of his presentation. My little adventure, while not a disaster, didn’t go nearly as well as I’d hoped.
Tonight after going to the temple I decided to once again have another subdued adventure. We were trying to decide where to go for dinner (you get relatively little flirting done in the temple itself, thus the dinner trip afterwards is requisite) and I suggested Clovers, home of the butterburger. My reasoning being that something that sounded so gross must actually be good, or the restaurant would have been closed down by now. Since no one had any better ideas, and I am in fact a convincing and charismatic fellow, we agreed to try out Clovers.
Since this qualifies as another misadventure, things obviously didn’t go terribly well. Evidently a butterburger has a toasted, buttered bun. Not very exciting. The end result is a burger slightly greasier than a greasy burger. While I’ve had countless burgers of lower quality, I’ve had a slightly higher countless number of better ones. I wouldn’t qualify this as an adventure gone awry except I did drag 9 people with me to have the butterburger experience, and the disappointment mounts with each additional visitor.
But I remain undeterred; every adventure can't be successful. Tomorrow I’ll investigate the restaurant known both as the best and worst Mexican food in Columbus. I’ll attempt to navigate a bookstore which has more than 30 rooms. And perhaps most daring of all, I’m going to attempt to make it from my house to the gym using nothing but underground tunnels. What can I say, I’m an adventurer.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
WhyQ?
In the year 2000 (In the Year 2000!) there was a website by the name of Am I Hot or Not. It probably existed before then, and probably still exists, but in the year 2000 it came into my life. As a freshman I was inventing all kinds of new ways to waste my time, and this website fit the bill. After all, Youtube and Facebook didn’t yet exist. It’s hard to imagine such a world.
A friend introduced me to the site and we decided to put our pictures up for the masses to judge. He is a significantly more attractive individual than I (as evidenced by his successful marriage and a nickname involving the word Hot) and accordingly consistently was rated higher than I was. But I managed to break into the top 50th percentile, and being hotter than average was sufficient for me. But it got me to thinking: is it healthy to know exactly how attractive you are? Sure, you have some idea, but how beneficial is it to have an actual score?
Certainly, Am I Hot or Not is not the model of scientific precision. What the masses believe isn’t necessarily correct. Wikipedia (which didn’t exist yet) and Stephen Colbert hadn’t introduced the Truthiness principle yet. But even if the masses were correct, the masses who happened to vote on AIHoN weren’t necessarily representative. And even if they were, many people, myself included, didn’t always give the people the exact score I felt they deserved. But let’s ignore those factors and return to the original query: is it healthy to know, to the decimal point, how attractive you are?
Cut to last month. Last semester I worked as a control in an autism study. At the end of the study they needed me to come back in and get an IQ test. I’m not clear exactly why, but I was relatively willing to get paid to find out my IQ. I reasoned that if it was high I’d be happy, because I frequently tell people how smart I am and it would like to have some evidence behind my claims. If my score was low, it would show how much grit and determination I must have to have gotten into med school and become the ½ doctor that I am. My score would either prove me intelligent or hard working. It was a win-win situation. Plus I’d get 25 dollars, or as I think of it, a fortnight of Wendy’s lunches.
I received my score shortly before Christmas vacation, and was surprised by the results. As I read the form I realized the error of my ways. It really wasn’t a win-win situation, but a losing one. No matter the result, my ego would be stroked. Perhaps for some a boost in self esteem is in order, but not for me. But not only would I become a bit more cocky, I’d simultaneously be frustrated. Because what IQ is satisfactory? Would I be happy to be at 100, the middle? 120 or 140, the two definitions of genius? The answer is that no score would make me happy. I’d always think that I could’ve or should’ve done better on the test. This is of course true, since I said the capital of Italy was FLORENCE. It’s not like I took 4 years of Latin, or, you know, passed grade school. Oi. So I knew that I could’ve gotten a higher score, for this and other mistakes. So I’d wonder about that, and about the person administering the test, and about the day I had to take it. And if there were no testing conditions to blame, I just should’ve done better because it’s ME. I won writing contests in elementary school. I had the 3rd highest GPA of my high school, which was full of nerds. I’m not bragging (since those are obviously silly things) but proving the point that no score short of 200 would have actually made me content. And even then, people have scores over 200, so I still could’ve done better.
Is it good to know exactly how attractive we are? Does knowing I’m a 6.2 improve my life in any way? Should this score influence the way I act or think about myself? I think the answer is obviously no.
Should I know exactly how smart I am? I certainly believe in the value of an IQ scale. Mental function can be an important diagnostic tool for psychiatry. But does the patient need to know their score? Do I need to know how my brain compares to the average?
I think C. S. Lewis is vastly overquoted, but we was probably a genius and he said “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.” Knowing my IQ can bring pride and pleasure, but not contentment or happiness. But it did bring me a fortnight of Wendy’s lunches.
A friend introduced me to the site and we decided to put our pictures up for the masses to judge. He is a significantly more attractive individual than I (as evidenced by his successful marriage and a nickname involving the word Hot) and accordingly consistently was rated higher than I was. But I managed to break into the top 50th percentile, and being hotter than average was sufficient for me. But it got me to thinking: is it healthy to know exactly how attractive you are? Sure, you have some idea, but how beneficial is it to have an actual score?
Certainly, Am I Hot or Not is not the model of scientific precision. What the masses believe isn’t necessarily correct. Wikipedia (which didn’t exist yet) and Stephen Colbert hadn’t introduced the Truthiness principle yet. But even if the masses were correct, the masses who happened to vote on AIHoN weren’t necessarily representative. And even if they were, many people, myself included, didn’t always give the people the exact score I felt they deserved. But let’s ignore those factors and return to the original query: is it healthy to know, to the decimal point, how attractive you are?
Cut to last month. Last semester I worked as a control in an autism study. At the end of the study they needed me to come back in and get an IQ test. I’m not clear exactly why, but I was relatively willing to get paid to find out my IQ. I reasoned that if it was high I’d be happy, because I frequently tell people how smart I am and it would like to have some evidence behind my claims. If my score was low, it would show how much grit and determination I must have to have gotten into med school and become the ½ doctor that I am. My score would either prove me intelligent or hard working. It was a win-win situation. Plus I’d get 25 dollars, or as I think of it, a fortnight of Wendy’s lunches.
I received my score shortly before Christmas vacation, and was surprised by the results. As I read the form I realized the error of my ways. It really wasn’t a win-win situation, but a losing one. No matter the result, my ego would be stroked. Perhaps for some a boost in self esteem is in order, but not for me. But not only would I become a bit more cocky, I’d simultaneously be frustrated. Because what IQ is satisfactory? Would I be happy to be at 100, the middle? 120 or 140, the two definitions of genius? The answer is that no score would make me happy. I’d always think that I could’ve or should’ve done better on the test. This is of course true, since I said the capital of Italy was FLORENCE. It’s not like I took 4 years of Latin, or, you know, passed grade school. Oi. So I knew that I could’ve gotten a higher score, for this and other mistakes. So I’d wonder about that, and about the person administering the test, and about the day I had to take it. And if there were no testing conditions to blame, I just should’ve done better because it’s ME. I won writing contests in elementary school. I had the 3rd highest GPA of my high school, which was full of nerds. I’m not bragging (since those are obviously silly things) but proving the point that no score short of 200 would have actually made me content. And even then, people have scores over 200, so I still could’ve done better.
Is it good to know exactly how attractive we are? Does knowing I’m a 6.2 improve my life in any way? Should this score influence the way I act or think about myself? I think the answer is obviously no.
Should I know exactly how smart I am? I certainly believe in the value of an IQ scale. Mental function can be an important diagnostic tool for psychiatry. But does the patient need to know their score? Do I need to know how my brain compares to the average?
I think C. S. Lewis is vastly overquoted, but we was probably a genius and he said “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.” Knowing my IQ can bring pride and pleasure, but not contentment or happiness. But it did bring me a fortnight of Wendy’s lunches.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Top 10
Reasons to watch American Gladiators
Top 10 Reasons to watch American Gladiators:
10. The Office, Scrubs, 30 Rock, House and Heroes are over.
9. Lost and Battlestar Galactica haven’t started yet.
8. Hellga and Wolf.
7. The new Assault is even better.
6. Watch Titan throw fools down the pyramid.
5. The competitors can’t handle the inclined treadmill.
4. Hulk’s constant hyperbolic commentary. I quote: “You just got hit more than I did in 30 years of wrestling.” “That was the greatest feat of aerial wrestling I’ve ever seen.”
3. Laugh at the utterly ridiculous sideline interviews. Seriously, you’ll be amazed at what comes out of these peoples mouths. It’s simultaneously cliché and mind-blowingly nonsensical.
2. Venom.
1. Crush.
Top 10 Reasons to watch American Gladiators:
10. The Office, Scrubs, 30 Rock, House and Heroes are over.
9. Lost and Battlestar Galactica haven’t started yet.
8. Hellga and Wolf.
7. The new Assault is even better.
6. Watch Titan throw fools down the pyramid.
5. The competitors can’t handle the inclined treadmill.
4. Hulk’s constant hyperbolic commentary. I quote: “You just got hit more than I did in 30 years of wrestling.” “That was the greatest feat of aerial wrestling I’ve ever seen.”
3. Laugh at the utterly ridiculous sideline interviews. Seriously, you’ll be amazed at what comes out of these peoples mouths. It’s simultaneously cliché and mind-blowingly nonsensical.
2. Venom.
1. Crush.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Punxsutawney Pilgrimage
Some of you have already seen this, but I thought it would be appropriate to post as we count the days to February 2nd.
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