You know, I started typing this thing Christmas Eve, and then I got distracted… and lazy… and then distracted. Did I mention I’m easily distracted? But I make up for it with the occasional stroke of absolute focus. I just can’t get to the middle of the bellcurve without rolling down the other side. Anyway, Christmas-flavored post, you’ll get my New Year’s resolutions by February (don’t make me threaten again with the stagecoach), I promise:

By popular demand, I ought to get back to doing this blogging thing. And, as it happens, Merry Christmas, everybody (see?). Consider it a gift – not that this is really a good gift… so, consider it socks. Actually, I got some nice wool socks for Christmas, very toasty.

And allow me now to summarize the Xmas loot, for your entertainment:
-Socks, aforementioned
-Shirts
-Undeclared on DVD: influenced perhaps by the fact that I saw all of it the week preceding Xmas, and that it is genius, and I have to show it to everybody at school, because seriously, this show is college, but funnier.
-Serenity DVD, because well, it’s necessary. My brother got one too, to prevent a power struggle when I go back to school.
- $100 headphones. My mom works for an audio equipment company, what can I say? They haven’t arrived yet, but should be snazzy. Actually, anybody want headphones at an incredibly low price? (I’m half-kidding here; My mom doesn’t know what the limit for employee discount purchases is…)
-Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1. A group with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and George Harrison? Sold! Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison don’t hurt the package either. A fun, not too serious album from some fantastic musicians.
-Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion, which seems like a pretty solid expansion to an addictive game.
-Civilization IV, which I haven’t played yet, but is nonetheless a game with fantastic pedigree.

Allow me also to express my most heartfelt exultation for the Bears. Woot! Go Rex! Go Bears!

Also, while I am expressing praise for all and sundry, I heart the Marx Brothers. Saw Duck Soup and Night at the Opera with folk Wednesday at the Music Box. Hilarious, wacky stuff. Night at the Opera has some slow bits, serious musical numbers, but Duck Soup is just non-stop zaniness. Mirror gags, random thigh-placement, musical number about war, jars, mustaches a-go-go – it has everything. Though I’ll admit that covers a lot of ground. “Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself!”

That’s one of Groucho’s many comeback one-liners, for the uninitiated.

I also saw King Kong (whee! six hours in the theater in one day!) that day with Casey and our grandmother. I’ll say this: you really feel for the big ape. Solid acting all around, and it’s interesting to see Jack Black in a (semi-) serious role. And if there are two things Peter Jackson knows, it’s creepy-crawlies and spectacular action sequences, and this movie has both in spades. Fastest three-hour movie I’ve ever seen.

So, it’s been a good break, save for that troubling total lack of productivity. I continue to make sporadic attempts to learn guitar, and simultaneously get a more thorough understanding of music. Got to make this “songwriter” business a little more legit, you know. Speaking of which: duck out now if you ain’t interested in the songs and poetry end.

There is a bit more of that, now. I had a fairly productive period around Thanksgiving, including a drinking song I wrote on the ‘L’. I don’t know why, but the CTA does wonders for my creativity. So, anyway, these are relatively new, though they've been up for a while now, less a few edits:

Hymn to St. Elmo the Sailor (drinking song, hopefully amusing even if you despise my other stuff)
Catch Me!
Keep on Dreaming

And there's some other stuff that may get up in the next week or so. Assumably, I will be back to procrastination-by-blogging once school starts again.

Sweet blinding monkey soup-faced critters from the deep! It's been a long time since my last update, and despite my prodding, Pat refuses to throw us all a bone/update. So I killed him.

....wait...maybe I shouldn't say that on the internet...this is how misunderstandings start, people. Therefore, I didn't kill him, but I have not heard from him since 2pm this afternoon, so I can't be held accountable for his whereabouts/well-being at the present time. Plus he's had the same away message up advertising for an event I know ended HOURS ago. Anyway...let this be a lesson to you, Pat: Update more often or federal investigators might stumble upon the blog and take me into custody for crimes I did not commit. Bollocks.

So...now I'm trying to remember why I wanted to update this thing....ah yes...Marty Sweeney....he's wrong. I thought I'd point that out. Actually, you can head on over to Toner-Blog (speaking of never updating) because he bothered to post something. Unfortunately, I don't agree with his evaluation of Syriana, and I was going to leave a comment explaining myself, but I thought this would be a good excuse to take the old blog out for a spin. Nothing like arguing over the internet I always say. Unless it's arguing in person, or over the phone, because those are way more intense. Honestly though, this post should not be construed as an argument. If there's anything people should be allowed to have their own opinions of, it's music and movies. So Mr. Sweeney isn't actually wrong, I just have a differing opinion of Syriana, so I thought I'd let you all in on it. Let's begin shall we?

Last week my long-deceased co-host/blogger/hort and I went to a sketchy cineplex on the North Side and watched a late showing of Syriana. Peter "I like to pretend I don't have enough money for a ticket" Tutanes was also with us, along with the two other people in the theater. So we watched the movie.

Personally, I thought the film was very well done, and I'm going to tell you why, but I'm not going to bother beating around the plot. Therefore, I see fit to attached a SPOILER WARNING to this post.

Now, I will not disagree with Mr. Sweeney on the point that Traffic is a very very good movie, and that there are certain parallels between the two movies. Still, I think that drawing parallels between these two films feels a bit forced. Rather, if any parallels should be drawn, it should be between Syriana and Munich, since they were released within weeks of each other and both strive to "blur the line" so to speak. Syriana, however, does a much better job with this than Munich, simply because it doesn't really sympathize with any party. As Americans, the issues of U.S. occupation of foreign countries and terrorism stop being so black and white. Our perspectives are turned all the way around and we find ourselves sympathizing with the most unlikely persons.

Syriana accomplishes this feat by just laying it all out for you in a plot which, at times, can be harder to sort through than Darryl Strawberry's legal file. Some point this out as one of the failings of the film, but I see it as one of the main strengths. Frankly, the big business of oil is just as complicated and lethal as the movie would make it out to be. We don't need to fight the plot to try and figure out who's behind what and who just bought who and whether or not that is legal. Instead, we should let ourselves become immersed in the plot, completely enveloped in it, so that we can connect with the main characters, who are just as lost as we are, and whose lives are all thrown around in different ways by the oil business. The American business man in Europe, the unemployed oil field workers in the Middle East, the young, black lawyer looking to cut out a place for himself, and the bearded CIA agent looking for answers--all these characters are searching, however vainly, for a bit of stability in their lives, which they actually have no control over. The film shows us how the oil business so heavy-handedly steers their fates.

Mr. Sweeney mentioned that he felt the film had no point in the end. Here, I will agree with him, but we must take it a step further and realize that the point of the film is that it has no point. This is a bit of an exaggeration, of course. The film as a whole has a point--to immerse us in the crazy mixed-up situation I only began to touch upon above. But this feeling of pointlessness is very important, and it stems from the fact that nothing changes at the end of it all--a point which is illustrated brilliantly in the very final seconds of the film, in which the lawyer takes his father into his house. He's accepted that his father will never change, just as the larger scheme of the film has shown us that the system of power in the Middle East will not change (at least as long as Americans still want oil). This may leave the audience depressed and hopeless, and if this is the case, then the movie has done its job. It's connected with us and made us feel small, which will hopefully make us feel angry, which will lead to our ultimate realization of the problem the movie presents and the lesson it has taught us.

In the end it's all quite mixed up, so I'll turn once more to the indomitable Roger Ebert who always puts things so eloquently in his reviews. He sums up his commentary on Syriana by saying:
"I think "Syriana" is a great film. I am unable to make my reasons clear without resorting to meaningless generalizations. Individual scenes have fierce focus and power, but the film's overall drift stands apart from them. It seems to imply that these sorts of scenes occur, and always have and always will. The movie explains the politics of oil by telling us to stop seeking an explanation. Just look at the behavior. In the short run, you can see who wants oil and how they're trying to get it. In the long run, we're out of oil."

Agree or disagree, my friends, but that's just good writing.

So here we are at the end of a rambling blog post, the length of which was almost entirely unintentional. Hey, and it even included a reference to "The 'Straw." Now that's entertainment.





I hope everyone had a good Festivus; I know I did.

Wheee! I'm done, and I already feel much better, even though I know some of my grades already, which are not entirely enouraging, but I should be alright, and this is a run-on sentence, which is something I do when I'm excited, and it's really bad form for an excellent grammaticist such as myslef, so I'll stop.

So, yeah, in a little bit I'm going to turn this thing off and pack it up so I don't go crazy over break. Sadly, I haven't been very informative over the past two weeks, but at least Alex has kept us entertaining. Infotainment, that's what we're all about here.

I can't wait to get home. I love it here, but it takes all my energy to stay sane sometimes.

www.gizoogle.com

Hours of fun.

Random Rabbi Reading!