Well, I was going to write something else in my Facebook note thing but don't really want anyone to see it, and since Liz is the only person who reads this, and I haven't heard from her in awhile, I just need to get some shit off my chest.
This month has been awful. My grandpa has cancer, I botched a date, my parents actually think that I might be going to church (spoiler: I'm not) and my friends are all too busy to hang out. Also, since I have developed the curious affectation of--oh, what's the term--making shit up pretty much all the time, not in a malicious way but definitely in an impish way, I think most of my acquaintances think I am on drugs. Also, my glasses broke (you try taping up glasses during an action movie--by which I mean "Quantum of Solace," which, as I have written elsewhere, is straight up, badass-awesome. Except that, as someone with a fear of heights, I just about pissed myself about eight times. Still: straight up, badass-awesome) and so I am wearing an older pair of glasses, which is an older prescription, but since they are not broken, they are more reliable.
Two positive things: I have started working on a science fiction epic designed for young adults, which not only features horribly violent things (my goal: scar every one under the age of 20 before the end of Obama's first term*) such as a talking dog who bites a man to death (which, horrifying as that is, is still not as bad as having to buy a new brand of dog food because you're scared of your man-eating dog who would probably sound like Sean Connery) a protagonist who dies half-way through, and, out of the last five notes in my outline, four of those involve violent deaths.
Also, the epigram:
“There are only two things that the machines want: The first is batteries, and the second is to kill us all.”
—Peter Stillman, Ph.D. in Robot Armageddon Studies
Uh, the other nice thing that has happened to me is that, despite it being the third year in a row that I was Bob Dylan for Halloween it does mean that I got to die my hair black, which is an interesting look and a nice change. However, because of some weird sort of voodoo my hair is no longer as poofy as it once was, so I have taken to combing my hair back, which makes me look like someone from a Scorsese movie, or Richard E. Grant. I don't know who the latter person is, but I think he was in "Hudson Hawk," an awful movie but better to look like a minor celebrity from a movie than an adorable, gigantic moppet.


*I learned that, apparently, Obama is left-handed, and, as leader of the greatest nation in the world (Lichtenstein lost on a technicality. Also, no one cares about Lichtenstein) this is the perfect launching point for the Lefties' world-takeover. When it comes to cabals, the Lefties are pretty much the best and also, the only one I am a member of.

I never post here, because when I do it tends to be weird journal shit I don't write in my journal because my journal is mostly a repository of bad jokes that only I and maybe three other people would find funny, and those three other people should be on medication but--
What can I say? For the zero people who will read this, I am here to be a bit of a buzzkill. Like, if you're on drink seven I'll take you down to four, unless you're an embittered alcoholic, but that's neither here nor there.
I saw "The Dark Knight" this morning, at 12:05 in Kansas City. It was a good movie. If I had seen it at a reasonable hour, with a bit more caffeine in my system, I might be able to go beyond that.
There have been comparisons to "The Godfather Part II." First of all, that movie is a masterpiece. So is the first "Godfather." Obviously. "The Dark Knight" is...it's a great crime movie, I don't know if it's more than that. It is definitely the first 'comic book movie' to deserve a better genre than 'comic book movie.' The Heath Ledger performance is beyond amazing, it's embarrassingly good, to the point where you wouldn't want to tell Heath Ledger how good he was in person without sounding like the worst kind of sycophantic brown-noser.
But it's not great, at least not for me, not yet. There are too many subplots. Aaron Eckhart is fantastic but sometimes superfluous. Nestor Carbonell looks too young to be the Mayor, and as someone who watches "Lost" I wanted to say every time he showed up "You do remember birthdays, don't you Richard?"* And the trip to Hong Kong was totally useless. The movie could be thirty, maybe forty minutes shorter and a masterpiece.
But my two main gripes--
Christian Bale. He's a good actor, maybe a great actor although I don't think he's yet found a role that resonates--a role that makes you say, "oh yeah, that's guy's great." "The Prestige" was fantastic, but more because of the plot, and this is a movie--a Batman movie--where you come out of it saying, "Oh, that shit was great, but the Batman stuff was sort of boring." My girlfriend seconded this. Also, when in costume, Batman talked like he had been smoking for eighty-years while simultaneously parodying anyone's impression of a tenor trying to be a bass.
Heath Ledger. Great actor, sure, say it, other people will. He's dead, you have to, and while he doesn't have a massive base of work what he did in "Brokeback Mountain" was solid, and he was great in "I'm Not There" and here he's...well, he's magnetic in a disturbing way: he makes you laugh at murder and until about half-way through the movie he's sympathetic enough that you can see him as a human-being, but he's not. So what's the draw-back? There's not enough of him. Like when you go to a fast-food joint and order a salad. You shouldn't go to fast-food (comic-book movie) if you want a salad (good movie) but you do, but because it's fast-food you get a tiny amount of Ranch Dressing (great performance) to go with it. Ranch Dressing is awesome, but in this context you can barely taste it because you got an amount of it that was measured out in fucking mililiters.
So, to reiterate in bullet-points sans bullet-points cuz I don't know how to do bullet-points in Livejournal:
--Great movie (in the "Departed" sense, not the "Taxi Driver" sense.)
--Christian Bale was bored for some reason.
--Not enough crazy Joker. Seriously. A guy who can make "Yeah" the funniest line of the summer--make it a fucking Joker movie.
Coda: I think this might have elevated the "comic-book movie" above the medium's own self-imposed limit of mediocrity. As far as "comic-book movies" go, I still maintain "Spider-Man 2" as the peak, followed by "Batman Returns" for reasons I cannot explain without sounding insane. The A.V. Club--someone there--compared "Dark Knight" to "The Departed" and there are a lot of corresponding elements.** "Dark Knight" isn't a comic book movie, and if it is, it's only because it's most boring character wears latex and rubber part of the time in a (I assume, nay, hope) non-sexual context. The Joker is insane; Batman is too, but no one talks about that because he's the good guy.
It's a very good movie. You (all one of you***) should see it, but if you do, drink some coffee and take your Xanax (that combination is probably dangerous--check with a doctor) and go see "The Dark Knight." If Bale (god bless him, and parentheses) isn't on-screen it deserves your full attention.

*When I watch any of the "Lord of the Rings" movies when Dominic Monaghan appears I say "You're gonna die, Chah-lie" a la Desmond.
**Three hot young actors, a single actress in a bevy of males; violence; a sadistic villain; crime. Dragged out too long.
***You being the guy who goes through blogs, working for Livejournal and hoping to find something worthwhile to post on the main page. God bless you.

The original idea for this was that it was supposed to be sort of a surrogate diary, since I hate writing by hand.  It takes too long.  But even if I were to record my daily minutiae, it would still not be of interest.
In any event, my only livejournal friend now is Liz.  The other two are creator and star of the television show "The Venture Bros." which I have a sad addiction to--the same as with "Arrested Development" and "The Daily Show."
And so, now that I am a little bit bored but not bored enough to set off for adventures in my horseless carriage, I am here to...report about my winter break.
1. Book.)  "Naked Economics," by Charles Wheelan.  I had started a book on economics before, by a Hazlitt--I believe the name was Henry Hazlitt, but right now I don't feel like looking it up.  I read about half of the Hazlitt book and dropped the name in a Political Science essay-final which I believe got me the A; but Wheelan's book is a bit more entertaining, and certainly more up to date.  It provides a good take on the stock market, the fed, and pretty much everything else--but it never goes in-depth, which is to be expected from a book like this, but all the same it is a bit of a disappointment.  Bottom line: I recommend it to interested parties, but I am not going to force it on anybody.
2. Book.) "The Ends of Power" by H.R. Haldeman.  I have, as some will know, been on a bit of a psychotrip with regards to President Nixon and the whole Watergate ordeal.  Haldeman was Nixon's Chief of Staff from 68 to 73, and this is his book discussing that period.  But a lot of it just denigrates the Democrats, or discusses how brilliant both Haldeman and Nixon were in fighting off the communist scourge.  It's great if you're into the subject but unfulfilling, and today some of it is entirely useless, for example, Haldeman's idea that Fred Fielding, a John Dean aide, was Deep Throat.  We now know it was Mark Felt, and subsequently, Haldeman's musings are meaningless.
3. Album.) "Z" by My Morning Jacket.  Although they resemble Wilco mixed with the Flaming Lips combined with a much better singer than either ever had, this thing kicks ass.
4. Movie.) "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" sort of sucks.  It's worth it, I guess, if you have nothing else to see and you're with your family.  Nicolas Cage isn't worth a lot to me after "The Wicker Man" and "Ghost Rider"--I can't believe I paid to see those.  But with this he's, at worst, solid, I guess, but the plot is a lot of trivia glued together to resemble some sort of narrative, and Ed Harris is almost wasted as the rival/villain/comrade of Cage and co.  Point is, you could see worse, but if you can't, and you can't see better, then you're going to see this anyway.
5. Movie.) "Sweeney Todd" is fucking dark, even for me, and I can laugh my jolly way through "Reservoir Dogs" and anything Scorsese has made, and even most horror movies.  But it's one thing to laugh at a decapitation--and another to laugh at fifty, especially when the victims all seem so...benign.  Look: it's a well-made movie, well-acted and so forth.  The violence and gore, though, make it a tough watch, and the ending is a bit unsatisfying.  If I was a professional critic it would not have made my top 10 but since I'm not, it will still probably make it to #9 or so.
6. Movie.) "Charlie Wilson's War." Now this is a movie.  You have Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Mike Nichols and goddamn.  The tone is light and the material is heavy and the acting is in-between; you root for the good guys but not too much, because you know they're going to win--and in any case, what do any of them have to lose?  No one says.  The two big names are pretty unremarkable but Hoffman does add a laugh or two, not so much because of his performance but because he has the gall to read his lines straight and where some silly facial hair.  The big problem is that this script, while excellent in terms of dialogue, has no sense of structure.  It goes from "Afghani-who?" to "Taliban" without any of the characters facing so much as mild acne in terms of dramatic obstacles.  So in this case it feels incredibly weird.  What screenwriter can do it this good without developing some sort of arc?  Aaron Sorkin, apparently.  Well, fuck it.  I wasn't expecting "Lawrence of Arabia" and I'll see "No Country" some other time.

Apparently there are some people out there who have not seen this beauty. So, dig it.



Also, I really just wanted another post so it looks like I use this thing more frequently than I do. And also to spread the Bowie and Bing, Bing and Bowie love. Not like that.

It's a good album by Herbie Hancock and a cute (read: potentially obnoxious) title for a first blog post (oh god)...and yes, it's late at night (or rather very early) but, well, I just made a livejournal and I will probably delete this later, if you can do that.  And if not...well, at least I haven't revealed any major secrets, besides a love for jazz and a penchant for cross dressing.  Oh shit.  I can't get my backspace to work.  Well, it's okay, we're all open-minded, right?  At least I didn't give away--oh, there, see, I almost did it again.  Hohoho.  I guess you'll never find out where those bodies are buried.  Oh, shit.  And, um.  By bodies, I mean, celestial bodies.  It's a metaphor.  I'm into astronomy, and, uh, a long-lost Wiccan tradition of shoveling dirt at the sky.