Category: General

I just got finished watching The Pianist. Despite my earlier post, I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it before. It was very good and probably deserved to win the Oscar for best picture over Chicago. It did an excellent job of showing the despiration of someone trying to survive by any means necessary. The movie I thought it most resembled was Stalingrad. I’m not sure how many holocaust movies are left to be made. There are certainly more stories to tell, but I think that only so many can be digested by the public. You don’t want to wind up with movies like Swing Kids (worst Nazi move ever).

As I sit typing this on my laptop i’m watching Mishima, one of my favorite films and, I think, one of the most under rated movies ever. It was directed by Paul Schrader (writer for such films as Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Last Tempation of Christ) and produced by George Lucus and Francis Ford Coppola. While written, directed and produced by Americans, the movie is entirely in Japanese.

The movies weaves parts of four of his novels, his past, and the last day of his life. The choice of set designs for the novels, the score (by Philip Glass of course 🙂 and the story are near perfect. Yukio Mishima is a really complex character (right wing, literary, homosexual, body building, death worshiping, and leader of a private army) A linear telling of his story just wouldn’t have worked. By showing his novels, you can better understand how he thinks, and better understand how he came to his end. Simply showing his last day wouldn’t never tell you how he got to that point. (what was his end? rent the movie 🙂

I went to a karaoke bar for the first time this week. It was sort of a farewell party for Jess who is going off to UNC for grad school in philosophy. It was an interesting crowd to say the least. It is prime hunting ground for people watching (and listening). I got to meet some interesting people who I’d otherwise probably never get to meet. I’d write more about the crowd, but its really a whole post of its own.

I got an Amazon package today and it contained three Philip Glass CD’s that I didn’t have. Etudes 1-10, The Orphee Suite for Piano, and Music in the Shape of a Square. All three were ripped to MP3 within an hour of me opening the box. (and no, I never share this stuff on Kaaza. No one would want it and I rip at 320k so the files are enormous anyway)

My love of Philip Glass’s music is something I don’t really share with anyone else I know. Its not popular music (although he was the musical guest on SNL once in the 80s). Some of my friends might tolerate listening to it, but I’m sure get no real joy out of it if I’m listening to it in my car.

I first heard music from Philip Glass about 8 years ago. I had heard the name before, but I didn’t know anything about him or his music. He is popular enough to get spoofed on South Park and the Simpsons, but not popular enough for people to know why he’s spoofed. I had purchased a classical music magazine at Barnes & Nobel that had an attached mix CD of recent classical releases. One of the tracks on the disc was “Le Domain de la Bete” from La Belle et le Bete (an alternate score he wrote for the 1947 Beauty and the Beast movie by Jean Cocteau). This was unlike anything else on the CD. This was unlike anything else I had ever heard. There was something very hypnotic about it.

I eventually decided to purchase one of his discs and going on nothing but the title and cover art, bought Glassworks. I was hooked.

Fast forward to today and I own pretty much every piece of music he has ever recorded, including pieces recorded by other artists. While part of my would like to evangalize his music to the rest of the world, a part of me likes the fact that I am a fanbase of one amongst people I know. Its like the indie rock snobs who only like bands that no one has heard of, but taken to the extreme. (I suppose I could go even further up the snob ladder by only talking about even more obscure modern composers….but even I have limits)

If you want to listen to Philip Glass, I strongly recommend working backwards. Get contemporary stuff then work back in time. Dont listen to anything recorded pre 1980 without having listened to more modern stuff first. His early stuff makes much more sense once you’ve heard is more recent stuff. His best stuff is what he has written for solo paino and for stage performance (film, opera, ballet). None of his symphonies have really grabbed me.

I’ve been to the gym almost every day now for close to three weeks. I’m not sure I can see a difference, but I can feel a difference. During the first week, my whole body was sore. I knew that was going to happen, so I just plowed through the discomfort and kept going.

There are lots of little aches and pains that I no longer have. Its hard to explain, but they’re just gone. Poof. The amount of weight I can work with is significantly more than when I started. I suppose that is to be expected as the largest marginal benefits will come from the first work you do. There is a chest press machine I was working with and I began lifting about 70 pounds, and today I was able to do sets of 10 at 105 pounds. That’s a 50% increase in 3 weeks.

I have lost some weight, but I’m not too worried about it, because unlike a diet, I’m also going to be building muscle mass. I know that if I continue this regiment, eventually there will be come visual change. There just has to. The calories I’m expending daily now as opposed to three weeks ago is significantly more.

• As I wrote in the previous incarnation of my website, one of my interests is odd ball geographic entities. The New York Times just did a story on St. Pierre and Miquelon, the last parts of France in North America.
• The trailer is out for the Mel Gibson movie “The Passion”, which is a retelling of the story of the last 12 hours of Jesus. As can be expected, any movie about Jesus is going to draw a lot of controversy. The interesting twist that Mel is doing with this film is that the dialogue is entirely in Aramaic and Latin….two dead languages. The film is also much more graphic than any other version of the story which has been put to film so far. Just from the trailer, the cinematography and lighting look amazing. I suppose they could put more into that given how much they saved on the script.

  So far no one as been willing to distribute the film. Given the number of people that read the “Left Behind” novels, I’d think they’d have a built in audience for this that would at least make their $25m back.

  I mention all of this only because I think the idea of making a movie in Latin and Aramaic is really cool and I hope it starts a trend in movies to use the proper languages of the subject matter. Lawrence of Arabia was cool. If parts were in Arabic it would have been even cooler.

• My favorite movie reviewer is James Berardinelli. He doesn’t write reviews for anyone, just his website. He’s been working on his all-time Top 100 movie list, adding a new film each week. He’s up to #23 now.
• Philip Glass’s Etudes for Piano 1-10 are FINALLY coming out on CD. Its about time.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is total crap.
• I’m now serving as the business manager for PVP. We have a new ad system in place now. Its all part of my master plan to screw Scott over.

I lectured at the Center for Public Speaking (an extemp camp) yesterday on economics. The upcomming extemp season will be a very difficult one in Minnesota. Despite having the reigning State Champion on our team, we will have to deal with three returning national semi-finalists, and a national champion. We’ve been moved into an even harder section for state (as if that were possible) and those three national semi-finalists are all in our NFL district. Great.

Nonetheless, I’m not too worried. Why? 1) We’re going to start WAY earlier this year. Going to do lectures and get the ball rolling at the annual Apple Valley speech campette they do in August. 2) We’ll be working every week throughout the school year. Most kids will still have to focus on debate, but they will at least be spending some time on extemp. 3) We’ll have more talent. More kids will be doing extemp as well as starting earlier. 4) The fact that the competition is so intense in Minnesota will only make us better. At least for this year, the quality of competition in Minnesota is the best in the United States by far.

It will be an interesting year…