November 30, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
6:18 PM (Pacific)
Hm, I'm feeling awfully chatty today. Actually I'm bored. I have to get off the Net soon.
It's very cold here (by SF Bay Area standards, I suppose it's a nice warm day in Boston). I've dug out a wool sweater, got my Doc Martens boots on (highly recommended for cold/wet weather), plus a leather jacket, and I'm freezing.
My son did his homework by himself. He's actually quite clever. I'm reliving my own days of public school...they don't really emphasize method. They give you the work; you figure out how to do it.
I hope I don't sound as if I'm complaining--much--about our swerve to the conservative. America has always swung back and forth. I mean there is May Day. We are a growing nation, we have not matured yet.
I miss Norfolk. I'm from Norfolk. I have not been to Norfolk (or Virginia for that matter) in almost 20 years.
What I miss most is the preserved downtown area, I hope that's still intact. They have some cobblestone streets, old houses, by the water...you can see boats and docks and tugboats. Fantastic.
I have not really heard any good songs lately. The radio has become...disjointed.
There's definitely less music on now, at least in the mornings (the only time I listen to the radio, generally speaking). What there is...the ClearChannel staples--Dido, Santana (hard for me to complain since I like those songs, but I've heard them hundreds of times by now), some weird country music I can't place. Disco. Yes, disco. I was there the first time. Funkytown, I Love the Nightlife, Ring My Bell, I Will Survive, Bad Girls...I could go on and on. They're back playing all of those songs.
Except punk. There is no punk on the airwaves. Not that I care. I was there the first time too. Anything remotely political is gone. John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Happy Christmas" song--which is what, 30 years old?--stands out as this glaring, long-haired, dope-smoking, in-your-face anti-war anthem. lol
I was completely and utterly bored just now, so I went to read Dain's blog. Now I feel better. :D At least I'm not in school anymore.
I still get the occasional "exam nightmare"--but get this. I have dreams where I've forgotten I even had a class to go to. I mean I never showed up in the class. I'm like, how can I get out of that?
The ones where you dream you have an exam in an hour--that you haven't studied for--don't bother me that much. Exams are seldom a test of knowledge...except programming exams, of course.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Not as spectacular as the first two Harry Potters, but still worth watching. The kids are getting older; there's more depth to this chapter in the story.
Secret Window. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! It's terrible. Johnny Depp can't save it. I like Johnny Depp, and he does bring an intensity to the role (the film would have been utter rubbish without him). So--for hardcore Depp fans only.
Okay, Fahrenheit 911. Let's try reviewing it again.
It is worth seeing. It is not a documentary...it doesn't pretend to address both sides of any issue. It's an expose, basically, so take it as such.
The really creepy and astounding part, is that it is comprised entirely of actual footage. Most of it is far too bizarre to have ever been scripted anyway. Some of it, particularly the stuff in the beginning, I've never seen before, ever, anywhere. I didn't know. It is just very strange.
That's what makes it interesting.
What comes to mind is the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. I was here, so some of it I saw on television only much later. We had no electricity.
So, the rest of the world saw the collapsed Cypress long before we ever did. I heard about it, sure, but seeing it is entirely different.
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Well, it hardly needs review. It must be seen...and I fancy having the whole set on DVD. :D
As usual, stunning battle scenes...and it is the battle scenes that made the movies.
Underworld. Ack, it could have been great, and isn't. Kate Beckinsale is good--a female Wesley Snipes in a swank catsuit. But one actor cannot save such a production.
It starts out fine, as a sort of cool Romeo and Juliet, vampire and human kind of a tale. And some of the early scenes are beautifully constructed.
But, at one point, it's as if they ran out of money and had to sack the writers. The same lines get used over and over again. Even some of the scenes get recycled.
Then...a war between vampires and werewolves? For whom are we supposed to cheer? Don't they both eat us? The vampires, apparently, have evolved into cloning blood, so I suppose they are the sympathetic party.
You have to see Volume 2 once you've seen Volume 1. It's less a matter of two separate films and more a matter of one long film cut into two segments.
Volume 2 picks up pretty much where Volume 1 left off. It's different though, it is less bloody and more...pensive. It still changes from, say, black and white to color and then to overexposure...but the changes are less dramatic. Overall the film is less dramatic. It goes more into the "why." And of course, The Bride (Uma Thurman) meets up with Bill (David Carradine of all people).
November 27, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
3:23 PM (Pacific)
I also saw Van Helsing. Hmmm...a bit of a disappointment. I suppose the special effects are much more impressive on the big screen.
The plot idea is good--you have a guy called Van Helsing (the yummilicious Hugh Jackman), who is hired by the Catholic church to get rid of vampires, werewolves, and so forth.
So you have Count Dracula, who cuts a deal with Dr. Frankenstein to acquire his monster. The deal goes south, Drac hatches a plot to kidnap the monster, enter a stupendous female vampire slayer (Kate Beckinsale)...it should be good but I found it somewhat draggy, actually.
Worth renting? Yeah...why not? It's not an awful movie. It just could have been better, I think.
I recently saw Kill Bill and some other movies, so I would like to review them for the benefit of those who have Netflix and so forth.
Kill Bill was great. I've never seen anything quite like it. For one thing, it keeps changing...not merely from medium to medium (saturated color, regular color, black and white, animation) but from genre to genre.
One scene will be in the style of a Chinese movie, complete with people flying and walking up walls; next will be like something from Pulp Fiction (natch). But then the film morphs into a Kurosawa scene...snow and kimonos, the samurai warriors. An entire sequence is animated. Then it's back to 1970's styled ultra violence.
It sounds jarring but it isn't; it's next to seamless. It all becomes part of the storytelling.
That's only one unique aspect of the film. The other outstanding aspect is that all of the main characters (aside from the unseen Bill) are female.
It is like the ultimate female gunslinger film. I'll guess that some men might still find it a bit shocking, but I doubt any of us does. Women have to fight as much as men; it's just that it's seldom portrayed on our big screen.
Mind you it is not for children. Heads roll, feet roll, arms roll...leave the kinder to watch something else.
November 24, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
4:59 PM (Pacific)
Unbelievable. I had this whole review for Kill Bill and Fahrenheit 911 written out. The entire Blogger program shut down right after I hit the publish button.
Coincidence or...?
du du du du, du du du du...
November 16, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
6:49 PM (Pacific)
The end of a tiring day. I had to drive today (by that I mean "pick up a car" driving, I do that sometimes), did a contract on the fly, I've been generally cross-eyed with a sort of general weariness...
November 15, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
3:28 PM (Pacific)
Sign your name across my heart
I want you to be my baby
Sign your name across my heart
I want you to be my lady
I'm in a rather mushy sentimental mood lately. It's from being a mother. Hard to describe it. It is not the same as anything you ever experience before you become a parent, and more specifically a mother.
I'm still rather proud of our reviews forum even though I can see my latest hack did something...weird. grumble It's a good script, mind you. It doesn't do anything weird-unpredictable, just weird-fixable...at most, weird-annoying, but not disastrous.
Well, life grinds on. As they say, our taxes will go up, no matter who won the election.
The image that's been in the back of my mind is of this sort of a horrible marriage, where both parties live inside this fantastically beautiful house. Oh, very War of the Roses.
Neither side wants to leave the house, since they both put so much work into it. On the other hand as I say it is not a good marriage, so there is this constant butting of heads.
That's entirely simplistic, I know. It's just the image that's been stuck inside my head for quite a while now so I thought I'd write it out.
The problem is that there aren't two sides or a hopelessly divided America. That's rubbish. I think we've been led to believe there are these two warring factions. But who are the factions? The working class against the working class? The middle class against the middle class? The middle class against the working class? But which is which?
November 13, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
11:57 AM (Pacific)
I try to say goodbye and I choke
Try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it, it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not near
Hmmm...not much happening.
November 10, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
3:33 PM (Pacific)
We're set to put up some new articles on The Lipstick Page Forums. I'm not sure yet if they'll be in PDF format or regular HTML pages.
Yeah, I remember thinking, What a fantastic voice. I hated Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, I thought it had to be one of the most inane songs in existence. But Freedom...I could not believe that shimmering, pure voice.
George Michael is still one of my favorite singers. You don't get to hear him in the U.S. anymore, not much. If you watch those international song video programs, you'll realize that he's still releasing new material and that he's still great. sigh
You know what's good? You won't believe it. Angel. They're rerunning this in the morning now...they showed Buffy, now it's Angel.
Now I liked Buffy. I thought it was cool. I didn't watch it faithfully but I've seen quite a few episodes.
Angel is somehow even better. It's darker. It has this noir vibe to it. A vampire cursed with a conscience...heh heh...
The radio was a little better this morning. I know it's a really weird thing to gripe about. But I've always loved playing the car radio. I've played it ever since I started driving when I was...14. I mean that is a long time: 25 years.
They played Madonna's Material Girl song today, and I flashed back to when I was still in Virginia. There is a sort of clear line in my life, dividing the music that played before I left Virginia from all the rest.
So there is that song, and the Don Henley stuff...Boys of Summer, All She Wants To Do Is Dance, Sunset Grill...that played right before I moved. Wham's song Freedom is what played when I moved. I distinctly remember hearing it when I was driving around in California for the first time.
November 9, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
1:57 PM (Pacific)
Enough with the rampant capitalism.
There's nothing on the radio these days...I mean there was a distinct change. More noise, more talk, more commercials, less music.
The last thing in the world I want is XM Radio. I am...tired. I'm tired of a service starting out at $14 per month, with no commercials...and ending up a few years later at $50 per month, soaked and choked and strangled with advertising *cough*cable tv*cough* I'm not buying it.
So, here is a song that's been playing in my head. It is from the old days when, ah, there was music on the radio.
Radio Song
The world is collapsing
Around our ears
I turned up the radio
But I can't hear it
When I got to the house
And I called you out
I could tell that you had been crying
It's that same sing song on the radio
It makes me sad
I meant to turn it off
To say goodbye
To leave in quiet
Radio song
Hey hey hey
I've everything to show
I've everything to hide
Look into my eyes
Listen
When I got to the show
Yo ho ho
I could tell that you had been crying
It's that same sing song
The DJ sucks!
It makes me sad
I tried to turn it off
To say goodbye my love
Radio song
Hey hey hey
The world is collapsing
Around our ears
I turned up the radio
But I can't hear it
I tried to sing along
But damn that radio song
Hey hey hey
I've everything to show
I've everything to hide
Look into my eyes listen to the radio
I turned up the radio
But I can't hear it
No, I can't hear it
[here is the "rap" part:]
Check it out
What are you saying
What are you playing
Who are you obeying
day out day in?
Baby baby baby
That stuff is driving me crazy
DJ's communicate to the masses
Sex and violent classes
Now our children grow up prisoners
All their lives radio listeners
November 8, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:30 AM (Pacific)
Hmmm...I can say that I wasn't disturbed by a Republican vs. Democrat thing, at all. To me, they're become ever more the same party. In fact it's become very difficult to distinguish anymore, which is the Republican candidate and which is the Democrat.
Sometimes it's almost funny. You'll see two guys debating on tv. The Democrat will talk about fiscal responsibility, while the Republican will talk about reducing corruption in the government. The Democrat will assure you of your right to own assault weapons; the Republican will say that no one should have attacked Kerry's war record.
What's disturbing is the notion of moving towards a religion-based government. I can admit that makes me jittery. Living under a religious government, is very, very different from simply being religious yourself. And once a religious government is in place, it is very, very difficult to remove it.
Ask Iran. People now think Iran was always an Islamic country. Nothing could be further from the truth. Iran had a secular government for many years. At times it could rightfully be called a progressive government.
How do you think Khomeini took over? It wasn't by force. It was by psychology.
The only hole in this potential scenario, of course, is that religious governments invariably involve brain drains, as anyone with half a brain flees the impending Dark Ages. For us, it would be doubly so. Religious governments tend to scapegoat women, particularly those who do not utter the requisite phrase "my husband" often or loudly enough. Since our women have college degrees, there's no particular reason for them to stay here and suffer.
Despite what you may have read, Americans are extremely reluctant to leave their country for any reason. It has to do with the deep, fierce, neverending passionate love that we have for our country. It's so embarrassing that we don't often speak of it. Only after extreme events such as 9/11 does it all come pouring out.
So, even as programming jobs were the first to go...I still can't believe anyone would outsource something like computer code; it's a disaster waiting to happen...still I am here. There may come a time when it will make more sense to simply follow the job rather than flip hamburgers, but I am not looking forward to it.
November 6, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:10 PM (Pacific)
What do we have for entertainment?
Cops kicking gypsies on the pavement
Now the news--let's snap to attention!
Lunar landing of the dentist convention
Italian mobster shoots a lobster
Seafood restaurant gets outta hand
You want a car in a fridge
Or a fridge in a car
Like cowboys do in TV land
I haven't played that record in ages. I still have it, of course. In the end, I preferred it to all of their other records; it was the most interesting.
Are we losing our best commentators? I'd hate to think so. It reeks of me becoming ever older and more crotchety and convinced that my generation was better, yadda yadda. That has to be nonsense.
Yet I yearn for Alistair Cooke, for Joe Strummer, for...John Lennon? For Gore Vidal. For Erica Jong. Or even for the American writers aside from politics: Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Thomas Wolfe.
I suppose that is actually what bothered me the most about this election and its prelude: that constant iteration of the word "elite." Elitist. Elitists. Hello. Isn't that what the Communists did? Didn't they vilify the educated class?
Does no one see the irony of that?
I even had this word used against me personally, in my own real life. It took me forever to "get it," being as I'm not a neo-conservative (although I am Republican in many regards). I always thought it was a good thing to be educated, to be intelligent, to think for yourself and do for yourself. If you're going to start a movement, then have at least one intelligent person in the forefront...that's how I saw it.
Then...at one point...I did get it. I realized these were the neo-conservatives. To this day I have no clue what their platform was, beyond deriding and scapegoating anyone who was, uh, elitist, whatever that really is. They weren't Republicans in any sense that I knew of. They never talked about fiscal responsibility or of making the public schools produce more educated kids, or of reducing taxes.
The quotation I could find for this entry...Gore Vidal:
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
These are the English maps. We don't get these maps. We get the maps that break down the votes by county.
Courtesy USA Today.
There's only one tiny problem with doing it that way. There's no way to know whether there are 30 people in any given county, or a million people.
November 5, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
4:02 PM (Pacific)
I am...American. I feel obligated to explain to anyone I know outside the U.S. ...what? That there are factors in the election that our own media doesn't report on? There are. There is a lot going on in the U.S., that has been going on for a very long time, that the Democratic party never took seriously (and still doesn't, apparently).
I mean can't these guys do the same thing the Republican party did? Can't they hire people in marketing, have focus groups, hire psychologists...figure out why people vote the way that they do?
I do not live in Bush country. There is an incredible pall hanging over here. No one smiles, except to force a smile. People are sort of staring into space, with a look on their faces that says, Hey, I voted. What happened?
Well, California is a given; no one even bothered campaigning over here, much, you'll note.
Ladies...if you did not vote this time...please do so next time. You have four years to get registered and get voting. Get an absentee ballot if you need to...if you have one of those jobs where it's next to impossible to vote (or if you feel you may have one of those jobs four years from now). Please do it.
*smirk* They changed the place where I was supposed to vote, without telling me. I showed up and I would have been shocked had my name actually been on the register (it's the same place I voted last time and no, I haven't moved).
The people there, likewise, had a rather vague notion of just where I was supposed to vote. I was to go to a "Galston Street" off Moeser and vote there.
Well...what can I say. There is no Galston Street. It's certainly not off Moeser. I've been up and down Moeser a million bazillion times; it doesn't exist.
pfffff It's a good thing I have a car and I had driven to this place and I had not had to vote at the last minute. Isn't it?
I found the place, get this--because one thing I like to do, when I have some spare time, is drive around unfamiliar places. I had a friend who used to do that...go to some strange place and figure out how to get out again. So I did remember there was some street with a name similar to Galston. It wasn't directly off Moeser but it was somehow connected to a street that was.
So...that's how I voted.
Heard on the news last night that American airlines have to pay $275,000,000 per year for extra fuel--because we've become so fat we need extra fuel to get the plane off the ground.
Oh yeah...Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn was canceled last night. It's true, they did water down the show at one point...had they not, I'll guess they would have been canceled back then. But...whatever. Just thought I'd write something about it.
I was depressed for like two seconds, metaphorically speaking, but I'm not anymore. It's our own fault. We can't say this guy was imposed on us from without. We voted the guy in and if we want a change, we'll have to do it ourselves.
Well, I can admit I'm jealous. There's a lively discourse going on outside the U.S., from what I hear. We don't get that. We have 3 cable news stations and they're basically 3 flavors of conservativism.
So YOU GUYS get Tony Blair telling the other European leaders that they're in a state of denial, and to snap out of it. You guys get the CBC News, which actually showed the women crying after the election. You get the newspapers asking how 59 million people could be so dumb.
WE get that same stupid speech they give someone who is being fired for purely ideological reasons, rather than anything work-related. i.e. that boring, neverending speech on how there really is a valid reason for you to be fired, if only you'd look hard enough for it. Please don't file for unemployment.
November 2, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
6:56 PM (Pacific)
I'm not even the kind of person who'd tell anyone to vote. This time, you have to vote. You just do.
November 1, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
9:15 PM (Pacific)
Hmmm...so why was I thinking about Michael Hutchence. I don't know, actually...I heard that song this morning (along with a beautiful all-Spanish song by Carlos Santana, Corazon Espinado). I've heard it a million times but I never knew he said "Come over here" in the beginning. :D
It's cold, I'm tired. I just uncovered a small bug and fixed it. sigh
I also love "Myth Busters." I saw one where the myth was, if you stored a dead body in your car, you'd never be able to get the smell out of the car.
Of course they didn't use a human body for the experiment; they had a dead pig in the car for what, a week? I forget. They rotted the dead pig in there, basically, then they tried cleaning it up.
As I recall, indeed they could not get the smell out of that car. Their consultant was this fellow (whom I later saw on Insomniac), a guy in Oakland whose job it was to clean up crime scenes, dead bodies, yadda yadda...
Another one was a guy with a tongue piercing who got hit by lightning. The idea was that the lightning was attracted to the metal "barbell" he had in his tongue.
Well they set up a fake head with a piercing in it and hit the head over and over again with simulated lightning. It never hit the piercing.
They tried bigger and bigger pieces of metal, to no avail. Finally they put a huge bolt inside the head and tried it again. This time the lightning zapped the bolt.
I've watched other "Myth Busters," those are just the ones that come to mind.
Dang it! I had this record. In fact I had two INXS records. Now I can't find either of them... I googled these lyrics but I wanted to play the actual song.
(whispered) Come over here.
Come over here
All you got is this moment
The twenty-first century’s yesterday
You can care all you want
Everybody does yeah that’s okay
So slide over here
And give me a moment
Your moves are so raw
I’ve got to let you know
I’ve got to let you know
You’re one of my kind
I need you tonight
’cause I’m not sleeping
There’s something about you girl
That makes me sweat
How do you feel
I’m lonely
What do you think
Can’t take it all
Whatcha gonna do
Gonna live my life
...
INXS were better than U2. U2 were more conscious of marketing, of surviving, of making more and more and more money, and they had a slight musical edge, if only because what they played was so different. But INXS were better, by far, in terms of sexual originality...of reinventing that raw sexual essence that rock and roll should be. Of still being those cute guys you just might meet somewhere, sometime, and have a laugh with.
Tomorrow is the election! We have a huge ballot in California, it's got everything from funding stem cell research to expanding collection of DNA; two props regarding Indian gaming; whether to change the three strikes law; whether to require large and medium sized businesses to provide minimal health insurance for employees...something for everyone.
The weather has cleared up...it's coldish now (it is actually quite warm considering it's November).
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